Pablo Carreño and Roberto Bautista will not be part of the next US Open. Two players with commendable dedication and a warrior heart; two luxury representatives of the values of Spanish tennis that have magnified our flag over the last decade. The end is coming? If that’s the case… let them take away the bailao’.
They always say that a person’s presence doesn’t really make itself felt until comes your loss. In tennis, of course, we also take things for granted. The routine happens before our eyes and it is not until the little habits change that we miss it. Routine had been made to see Pablo Carreno y Roberto Bautista in the Grand Slam final draws. In the round of 16 of Masters 1000. In the top-20, top-30, with the usual incursion (by both, be careful) in the elite of the top ten in the world. Neither of them will say present in the last Grand Slam of the year, a US Open 2023 It marks the end of an era.
Pablo Carreño has one of his favorite places at the US Open. Here he came to his only two grand slam semifinals of his tennis career. He was excited, perhaps more than on any other occasion, when he led by two sets to nil against Alexander Zverev in the year 2020. Beyond being the US Open with the empty door, the boxes for the tennis players and that incident between Djokovic and the lineswoman, the Spaniard did what he does best: leave the noise behind him , being much more solid on a mental level than several of his opponents and trusting that his tennis would shut up mouths. The mouths of those who underestimated him, who set the bar in the stratosphere due to the presence of a monster named Nadal and who never deserved the regularity of a racket worker as he deserved. It never hurts to remember those silent mouths in a year, of course, in which Pablo’s elbow forced him to put the racket away. Now many remember him with nostalgia.
His biggest prize, which in hindsight might seem like some sort of ‘deal with the devil’, came last year at the Canada Masters 1000, when he won his first and only Masters 1000 after defeating Hubert Hurkacz in the final. That prize has not yet arrived for another racket-born worker, a Roberto Bautista who will not be part of the game at Flushing Meadows either. If Rober hides something, they are stories of overcoming: to ward off the ghosts that instilled in him that he was not good enough (if the youngsters of his generation were already playing and winning in ATP, why did he keep playing Challengers?), to recover from life’s blows that go further beyond tennis (Davis Cup champion shortly after the death of his parents). At 35 years old, a season has come in which his immaculate consistency has been relatively altered; There is no better time to remember everything that a guy who never negotiated the effort has given us.
THE END OF AN ERA?
Both are over thirty, both have moved away from their best ATP ranking, both are coming off a losing streak and injury problems that cast more shadows than lights. Questioning whether we are at the end of an era would be logical, but these two warriors have shown that leaving them for dead would be a big mistake. It never hurts to remember data like that the last Grand Slam that Roberto Bautista played without being seeded was nine years ago (Australian Open 2014) or that Pablo Carreño owns the same number of Masters 1000 as names like Stan Wawrinka, David Ferrer or Juan Martín del Potro.
Because sometimes we make the mistake, and we persist in it, of not realizing what we have until it’s gone. That’s where nostalgia seizes us. So let me put nostalgia aside, and before we look closely at everything that’s going on in New York, surfing from court to court like racquetball fanatics, may I acknowledge the immense humanity and category as ambassadors of our sport of two types who have never negotiated effort and sacrifice. If this marks the end of their greatest splendor era, what a pleasure it was that it took place at the same time, at the same time, to appreciate two great tennis players and people together. And yes, let me tell you: they will be back. We will be here to see it.
2023-08-19 15:13:40
#Carreño #Bautista #era
