In the story of the great feats of sport, journalists often fall into the commonplace of ensuring that we have run out of adjectives. Of course, it is a way of apologizing in advance because the ones that we are going to use, even the most unique ones, we already have too worn out from use. The seams are noticeable. In the case of Rafa Nadal this is obvious. We have been repeating the same compliments to the Manacor tennis player for so many years that so much repetition is not that it tires but that it can be bland and anodyne to qualifyFor example, what was seen yesterday on the Philippe Chatrier runway in Paris. We are talking, quite simply, of one of the greatest feats of sport of all time and of a match that can forever mark the history of tennis.
It’s not just that Nadal has already reached twenty Grand Slam titles, thereby tying Roger Federer for the all-time leadership in men’s tennis. Nor that the Spanish champion added his thirteenth Roland Garros twist, a figure that is not of this world. After all, the twelve were also a stark barbarity that no other player had achieved on the same stage. That Nadal is the king of the earth, in short, has less discussion for years than the law of gravity. What was discussed yesterday was the absolute supremacy of Novak Djokovic on the circuit and his status as a great favorite in the battle for the historical number 1. To get it and get closer to a record that he would be in a position to overcome – and it is not that, after his defeat, together with the disqualification at the US Open, he has stopped being so – the Serbian needed to win on the clay of Paris and do it against Nadal . In other words: I needed to complete the most difficult challenge that tennis has ever existed.
On paper he had a good chance of getting it. All the great experts saw a highly contested final, 50%, a heads and tails. Well, not all. There are always talkative people out there wanting to attract attention by doing populism in front of their parish. Goran Ivanisevic, for example, said on Friday that Nadal had “no chance” against his friend and half-pupil. He could have been a bit more cautious, but he preferred the broad brush. Like when he played, wow. Except for those people, I insist, the ‘chair’ of tennis predicted maximum equality and focused its reflections on the small details that could decide the duel on one side of the court or the other. In this sense, everyone agreed – even Djokovic himself – that the extraordinary conditions of this edition, with cold and heavier balls and a track harmed the Spanish game. And that it would hurt him even more, to a point perhaps irreversible against an intractable rival who had not lost a game all year except for his disqualification against Carreño, that the final was played with the indoor court.
Covered track
Well, all those theoretically negative conditions for the defender of the title converged yesterday in the final, which the organization forced to play with the indoor court without knowing very well why, taking into account that it did not rain in Paris during the two hours and fourteen minutes that the game lasted. In fact, even a more than pleasant sun shone for what is fashionable at this time in the French capital, one of those cities with a deceptive and unpleasant climate. Mark Twain could have said about her what he said about San Francisco, that is, that the hardest winter of his life was a summer spent there. So how to explain what happened? How, then, was it possible for Nadal not only to win but to chop Djokovic into mincemeat until he inflicted probably the hardest defeat of his life? 6-0, 6-2 and 7-5.
That slaughter did not enter into any calculation and is easy to understand. And it was that it had no logic. And he did not have it because in a match so close and with such a pressure load, in a duel that was to mark the history of tennis and the careers of its two protagonists, it is not logical to imagine that one of them reaches perfection. We are human and they are simply things that do not happen. Well, this is just what Rafael Nadal achieved yesterday, enlarging his legend in a definitive way around the world. His tennis reached perfection. From the very first game it was a complete symphony of talent, vigor, strategy, ambition and cold-mindedness. Something sublime, a real gale that took the world number 1 ahead, turned into a stunned spectator in a final that has been trying to win again for years.
The broadcast on Eurosport was curious. The games passed and while Nadal’s hammer of Thor destroyed his rival, the announcer and Álex Corretja were more restrained than usual in their praiseworthy comments to the manacorí, as if deep down they felt that that overwhelming spectacle was something unreal. You have to understand them: it was the wonder of perfection.
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