On Rafael Nadal’s late-night win, and David Ferrer’s final Grand Slam

Court Report: Day 1's big results from the 2018 US Open

NEW YORK—We always knew David Ferrer would go out fighting. It was all the 36-year-old Spaniard, who was playing his final Grand Slam at the US Open after 18 years on tour, had ever done. With him, the victories have always seemed secondary to the ceaseless effort he put in to achieve them.

A player like that shouldn’t end his Grand Slam career with a retirement, right? In another way, though, it made sense: On Monday night at Flushing Meadows, Ferrer went out fighting not only his opponent, Rafael Nadal, but his own body as well. Early in the second set, Ferrer called the trainer, who worked on his calf during two changeovers. Ferrer kept playing, and he even broke Nadal and took a 4-2 lead in the second set, before finally calling it a night. Rafa advanced 6-3, 3-4 ret., in an hour and 23 minutes.

By that stage, Nadal seemed to know what was coming, and throughout the evening he worked just hard enough to maintain a lead over his friend and Davis Cup partner. He broke Ferrer at 1-1, and again at 3-5. And while Nadal’s statistics were nothing to write home about—he made 22 unforced errors against just 16 winners, and double-faulted three times—it may have been exactly the truncated workout he was looking for in the first round, on a hot evening like this one.

Even when he was healthy tonight, Ferrer was a step short and a shot late. He has been able to stay in rallies, but only up to a certain point, and when he pulled the trigger, the bullet wasn’t there. He sent his putaway shots wide, long, and into the net, though he still ended up with the same number of winners—16—as Nadal.

Photo by Anita Aguilar

For fans of Ferrer, of Spanish tennis, of men’s tennis, of tennis in general, it was hard to watch this era’s premier fighter-for-fighting’s-sake have to give up mid-battle. But if his body was finally broken, it’s because he pushed it as far as he could. My favorite Ferrer memory will be his last great one: His fifth-set, fifth-rubber win over Philipp Kohlschreiber to clinch Spain’s quarterfinal Davis Cup tie over Germany this spring. Fittingly, it was played in a Bullring, and fittingly, Ferrer was the last man standing. He may be again when Spain resumes its Davis Cup campaign—the last real Davis Cup campaign—next month.

But that epic effort was only the last of hundreds that Ferrer gave us over the years. He didn’t have a huge serve. He didn’t have a cannon forehand. He hit his backhand with his two hands separated from each other, in a way no one would teach you to hit that shot. But Ferrer was always there, standing tall at the baseline, bouncing back and forth in that tireless way of his, staring across at his opponent, waiting for the next serve to come his way. Ferrer got angry at himself, but did he ever get discouraged or give a mental inch?

At the peak of his career, five or six years ago, I wrote that I had watched Ferrer run so much that I had come to believe that every minute of every day, even when there was no tournament happening, David Ferrer must be running around somewhere. Even now that he’s retired from the majors, and soon to be retired from tennis, I’ll probably think the same thing. It’s hard to imagine David Ferrer doing anything but fighting.

“This is the last Grand Slam of my career,” Ferrer said to the Open crowd, in his customary simple and honest way. “Thank you very much, I will miss you a lot.”

We couldn’t have said it any better—the feeling will be mutual, Daveed.

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