20 for 20: No. 7, Nadal d. Verdasco, 2009 Australian Open

Last year, for the 50th anniversary of TENNIS Magazine, we focused on the past. Given the tome of stories we’d told, and the trove of players and matches we’d witnessed over the past half-century, it was only natural to look back.

And it was comical to even consider doing something similar this year, for the 20th anniversary of TENNIS.com. So we’re taking the opposite approach, and instead focusing on the future. All throughout the week, we’ll be talking about what’s next for the sport, the website and much more.

It wouldn’t be an anniversary, though, without a countdown. But how do you count down events that haven’t yet happened? By predicting what will come to be.

With that said, we present TENNIS.com’s 20 for 20: Twenty matches that we’ll still be talking about twenty years from now. We’ve restricted this list to matches that have taken place in the last 10 years—or, as 20 for 20 author Steve Tignor has put it, “The Golden Decade.” (If you haven’t read our 50th Anniversary Moments or Tournament of Champions, also written by Steve, I implore you to do so.)

It has been a bountiful time for tennis since TENNIS.com’s inception, and it’s anyone’s guess what the next 20 years will bring. But we believe that each of these matches will sustain the test of time.—Ed McGrogan, Senior Editor

A few minutes after it was over, the winner of this scorching semifinal made our case for why it belongs on our list seven years later:

“Today was one of those matches you’re going to remember [for] a long time,” Rafael Nadal said after outlasting his countryman Fernando Verdasco in a five-hour, 14-minute marathon display of baseline pyrotechnics.

If a tennis fan of the future wants to know what tennis was like at its best during this Golden Decade, Nadal-Verdasco might be the match to watch first. In the shot-making and stamina that it demanded of the two Spaniards, and the emotion it wrenched from both, their semi remains unsurpassed.

These two lefties dueled at top speed from start to finish. Forehands were hooked into corners, backhands were belted for winners and slices skidded and curved as the two traded offensive and defensive roles seemingly with each shot. There was power, yes, but what made this match special was the ability of both players to bend the ball to their wills. Twelve years after the debut of polyester string, its spin-producing potential had been fully realized.

The fans in Rod Laver Arena gave standing ovations for individual points, and Verdasco, who hit 95 winners, smiled as he watched a few of them replayed on the Jumbotron above the court. Yet it still wasn’t enough. After blasting his way through the fourth-set tiebreaker, he looked ready to pull the upset over his top-seeded opponent in the fifth. But Nadal hung on, and with Verdasco serving at 4-5, Rafa went up 0-40 for triple match point, As he stood at the precipice of victory, a tear of emotion and exhaustion appeared in Nadal’s eye. Verdasco saved two match points with winners; did Rafa have anything left to win the third? We’ll never know. Verdasco double faulted, and both players collapsed.

“In the last game, at 0-40, I started to cry,” Nadal said. “It was too much tension. Fernando was playing, I think, at his best level. He deserved this final, too.”

Nadal, it turned out, did have something left for that final two days later, as he beat Roger Federer in another five-setter. But Verdasco would eventually gain a measure of revenge. In 2016, these two hooked up again in a five-setter in Australia, in the first round, and this time Verdasco won. Like the rest of us, he hadn’t forgotten 2009, but he wasn’t going to let it happen again.