Rome is a city in which stone and marble pile hundreds of memories between its cracks. Where some impressive battles have been marked in its Colosseum and whose foundations were charred by the madness of an emperor. But when Rafa Nadal looks back and thinks of Rome, he does not see the eleven titles won within the walls of the Foro Italico. You don’t see the statues around the Nicola Pietrangeli track, or the ice creams and vacations that happen in the Italian capital. When the Spaniard looks at Rome, he sees a defeat. See ‘Peque’ completing the victory of his life, defeating him on the tenth occasion and slapping his return to the circuit with a match that bothered who reigns on earth like never before.
“The most recent thing is that of Rome”, Nadal weighed before measuring Diego Schwartzman in Roland Garros semi-finals. «He starts with a slight advantage, but it is true that we are in a special tournament for me. The conditions are more favorable for his style of play, but I have to find my way to hurt him and have a chance to win, “he added.
The Argentine, his last executioner, returns to cross that route at the thirteenth Roland Garros, the title that would equalize the Spanish with Roger Federer. The Buenos Aires native is in the best moment of his career and is already in the top 10 of the world with the firmness that shows that all those who did not believe in him were wrong because of his height.
Horny
Heir to the Guillermo Vilas, José Luis Clerc, Gabriela Sabatini, Gastón Gaudio and Guillermo Coria, Schwartzman has been accustomed to looking down every time he congratulated or consoled a rival on the net. Despite being told by a doctor that he would never grow above 5 feet, he did not stop believing. And it is that faith is what a boy from Buenos Aires needed the most saw his parents lose their fortune in the 90’s and how the Argentine Federation denied him aid to play for not being one of the first in the ranking. «I was devastated. I didn’t know what I was going to be able to do in my life if the doctor was right and I didn’t grow any more », he explained in the Argentine newspaper ‘La Nación’.
Of those doubts to now enter among the top ten in the world, to defeat Nadal in Rome and play his first final of a 1,000 Masters, in addition to having already achieved three titles on the circuit.
And it is that getting over it was always a constant in the Schwartzman family. Before Diego, his grandfather survived a problem greater than height. Abraham Tuchsznaider, his grandfather on his mother’s side, was Jewish and lived in Poland. During World War II, he was transferred to a concentration camp, but the coupling that held the two carriages of the train that was carrying him broke. Abraham, along with dozens of people, were stranded on the tracks as the train left. They were able to escape and years later, the grandfather took the family to Argentina.
“Just thinking about that makes me realize how lives change in an instant,” reflected Diego Schwartzman, who will be this Friday before the most difficult task in tennis: defeat Nadal at Roland Garros.
He will do it with nothing to lose and without the slogan about his height upsetting him one iota. “They ask me: ‘How does measuring 1.70 affect you as a professional tennis player? What do you think you could have done if you were taller? ‘ My answer is always the same: I have worse problems than being four inches shorter than everyone elseSchwartzman pointed out.
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