Why we already miss Rafa Nadal

For those of us who love sports, witnessing the decline of our icons is, in a way, assuming that time passes for everyone; that we are getting old Those phenomena that dazzled us leave an indelible mark on our memory and, at the same time, are transformed into images that we idealize. Suddenly, we realize that we miss to the point of melancholy those who, due to so much hegemony, became retiring figures, of an almost tedious superiority.

Argentine sport is full of examples in this regard.

Carlos Reuteman He went from being “the one who always came second” to leaving a hole in the Formula 1 elite that Argentine motorsports never seriously covered again. And 41 years have passed since his retirement.

Gabriela Sabatini She is no longer the one who couldn’t with Steffi Graf but an incomparable icon of Argentine women at the service of sport.

And one day, we found out that Guillermo Villas, he was no longer the left-handed man who lived overshadowed by the impregnable coldness of the Swede Bjorn Borg and who lost matches so as not to play against Jimmy Connors, but the number one in the world that the ATP never wanted to recognize. Not even through the calculations with which the dear Eduardo Puppo demonstrated that this should have been the case for a few weeks in 1975.

Beyond the logic that each of these examples assumed when stepping aside -the cracks do not always leave the high competition before it leaves them-, it is usual that, only at the moment of goodbye , let us be aware of its real dimension. It happens to us when we start to miss them.

For almost 20 years, men’s tennis has gone through an unprecedented stage.

Between Wimbledon in 2003 and Australia in 2023, Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic shared 64 of 75 Grand Slams. It’s more. Since Federer won his first British Open, the three of them shared 28 of the 29 major tournaments played, only interrupted by Juan Martín del Potro and his 2009 US Open. And even more. To give a historical dimension to this misappropriation of the tennis throne, it is enough to remember that, to reach the number of great titles that they three added, it is necessary to put together in the same bag those achieved by Pete Sampras, Roy Emerson, Rod Laver, Bjorn Borg , Bill Tilden, Ken Rosewall, Ivan Lendl and Jimmy Connors. Anyone who is a fan of this sport will understand what such names mean in history.

The end of the cycle became clear with Federer’s retirement: it was enough that he lost in the Wimbledon 2021 quarterfinals against the Pole Hubert Hurkacz –a not inconsiderable world number 15– for the Swiss to decide that, if he could not continue to be a boss in the home garden, no other tennis effort would make sense.

And, in case anyone had doubts about it or hope that something of that is still alive, this week cleared up any speculation. Nadal’s announcement that his physique would not allow him to face the next Roland Garros with a certain level of competitiveness sounded like much more to me than a circumstantial absence.

Wimbledon is to Federer what the Bois de Boulogne classic is to Spaniards. Since his last injury at the Australian Open, in January, he gave the feeling that all of Rafa’s efforts and tests pointed to a new gala performance at the French Open. That a competitive animal of his size resigns himself to not indulging himself supremely is frankly symptomatic. The feeling is that, if we were to have any more Majorcan performances, it would be like those farewells that are carefully chosen. A farewell function of those that do without rivals and results. Hopefully it’s just a misperception.

Selfish as we are when it comes to demanding that our idols guarantee us eternal enjoyment, we fail to take into account that those who have spent a lifetime making news that, from time to time, someone beats them rarely bear that the sunset pass over.

And Nadal is one of those. A phenomenon of perseverance and improvement capable of winning by superiority, by knowledge of the game, by power but also by persuasion. There were not a few times in which, in those days in which things do not go as desired, Rafa ended up solving everything with the badge, the shirt, the last name or the figure that they want. We saw a lot of very good players feel that the urgency was still theirs even when they were clearly ahead. Thus, they went from being “those who have nothing to lose” to being those who “let’s see if they dare to beat me”.

I think that of all this fascinating and unrepeatable stage, what we are going to miss the most were the duels with Federer. It is still a curious fact considering that, of the possible crosses between the triumvirs, it is the one that was played the least times. It is also a sensation between unfair and unsympathetic with respect to Djokovic, who is the one who won the most in those head-to-head.

But nothing distinguished the circuit more than such a duel of styles. On the one hand, the craftsman, the one who did everything with the aesthetics of Nureyev, the one who never sweated. On the other side, the fury, the one who couldn’t play without body pain, the one who seemed to face each game as if the one in front was about to steal his wallet. Not only did Nadal win more than he lost to the Swiss, but he was left with one of the most wonderful stories that this sport has ever witnessed when he beat him 9-7 in the fifth in the memorable 2008 Wimbledon final. he dethroned the king of the grass in a game that we started watching with breakfast and found us screwed to the TV at snack time. Things that I very much doubt will happen to us again.

Once, sitting in the press box on Center Court at the All England, I understood that being a Grand Slam champion is a matter of life. It was in 1987, when Australian Pat Cash won his only Major. A Roland Garros was enough for Guillermo Vilas to become an eternal idol of the Parisians.

Multiply that feat by 14. Although it sounds too cold for such excellence, perhaps behind that statistic lies one of the strongest reasons why Rafael Nadal has decided to leave us a little more orphaned in tennis. Perhaps also because of that same greatness, he will leave us without even a farewell function.

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