Guga Kuerten, the last clay court legend before the appearance of Rafael Nadal, usually jokes when he is around Roland Garros with the spaceship in which the Spanish tennis player travels. “I wonder where the spaceship parks, because it’s not from this world”, says the triple champion in Paris. The great John McEnroe once said that “beating Nadal in the best of five sets on clay is like licking your elbow… impossible!”while Guillermo Vilas came to assure that it was necessary “create a person artificially” so that someone could knock down Nadal at Roland Garros.
Those three sentences are just three anecdotes of the many that explain Nadal’s special relationship with Roland Garros, a tournament in which he has won 14 titles and in which he has only lost three of the 115 matches he has played. That’s more than 97% wins in a span of two decades, with 100% wins in finals. However, neither Kuerten nor McEnroe nor Vilas ever faced Nadal on the clay of Roland Garros. What does it feel like to be there, in the immensity of the Philippe Chatrier, with such a monster in front of you?
Those who can best answer that question are their victims. Nadal has faced a total of 74 different tennis players and has beaten them all, because the only two people who have managed to beat him in his fiefdom have been Novak Djokovic (8-2 Nadal wins head-to-head) and Robin Soderling (3-1 for the Spaniard). Of the other 72, only two managed to force a fifth set: Isner in 2011 and Aliassime in 2022. Theirs has been and will be of insulting superiority. From when he won his first match against Lars Burgsmuller back in 2005 until he defeated Casper Ruud in the 2022 final.
“I played against him when he couldn’t even walk because of the foot problem. He went with his foot anesthetized. In fact, I saw him the next day and he was on crutches. I couldn’t walk“Ruud himself recounted a few months ago during an exhibition about his experience at Roland Garros against Nadal. “Although I lost badly (6-3, 6-3 and 6-0), I was actually thinking the night before: ‘I never know You know, maybe he’s so injured that he can’t even walk, maybe if there’s a year when someone can surprise him it could be this one.’ We all knew he was injured, but he didn’t beat everyone“.
The Norwegian remembers that feeling of helplessness perfectly. “I’m not going to say his tactics are simple, but he just catches you on the backhand. And in the end there is nothing you can do. It makes it too physical. To win a point, you feel like you have to hit a winner all the time from up here (points over his head on the backhand). He can hit that top spin forehand blindfolded.”
What Ruud felt was experienced firsthand by many tennis players. “I remember that game at Chatrier perfectly. The court is huge, but I saw it as small as a ping pong table. I saw the field as small, small and Rafa as a giant. I couldn’t give him a point, it was terrible,” Horacio Zeballos, current number one in the doubles ranking along with Marcel Granollers, tells Relevo. The Argentine faced Nadal in the second round of 2010 and fell 6-2, 6- 2 and 6-3.
“There is no one who comes remotely close to Nadal’s game on land”
Roger Federer
Another Argentine, Diego Schwartzman, managed to play more the times he faced the giant at Roland Garros. In fact, He played three matches and won two sets, something that in itself has merit. “Rafa is unbeatable here, the numbers say it. She always finds a way to escape and win. I hope that next year I won’t be on his side in the draw,” he said in 2021, resigned after losing in the 2020 semis and in the 2021 quarterfinals with the Balearic Islands. And the fact is that no one, not even the most daring, wanted to see to Nadal for his side of the draw.
Even Moyà, his current coach, suffered it
“Before the drawing was drawn, we were all praying not to run into him. We said to each other: ‘Can you imagine that you enter center court and at the end, after two sets, you still haven’t scored a game?’“, Jo-Wilfried Tsonga said a few weeks ago. Luckily for him, he never got to experience that. The last Frenchman to snatch a set from Nadal in Paris was Paul Henri Mathieu and it was in 2006.
The following year, in 2007, one of those who suffered him was Carlos Moyà, who is currently his coach. “Rafa doesn’t intimidate me,” he said in the hours before. The former number one and champion on the Paris clay won 6-4, 6-3 and 6-0 in the quarterfinals. “It’s a situation in which the track gets bigger and he gets bigger”, he recalls now in conversation with Relevo. “If I’m not mistaken, he has lost three games in his career there. That makes you see the magnitude of the task it is to beat him there when he is in decent condition. When he gets there, it’s not that he transforms, but his level automatically goes up.“.
Djokovic can give a good account of that. The Serb beat Nadal in the 2015 quarterfinals and the 2021 semifinals, but the Spaniard beat him in the other eight duels, including three finals and three other semis.
“Playing against Rafa at Roland Garros is probably one of the biggest challenges you can have on the circuit“said the current number one during the last tournament in Rome. “We all know his record there and I have probably been the player who has faced him the most times on that court.”
“The court is bigger, there is more space and that visually affects the game a lot. There are moments when he is well positioned, with rhythm, without making mistakes and you feel that he is impenetrable, like a wall. “He is an incredible athlete and facing him at Roland Garros is a unique challenge,” Djokovic added.
The Serbian managed to defeat Nadal in Paris, something that Federer could never achieve. The Swiss faced the Spaniard six times, in four finals and two semifinals, and did not even take him to the fifth set once.
His last defeat was in the 2019 semifinals and he left a phrase to remember afterwards. “I can’t find anyone as good as Rafa to train me”, he said smiling. “It’s amazing how he plays from deep in the court and then recovers on the baseline. There is no one who comes remotely close to Nadal’s game on clay“. Roger’s word.
2024-05-25 05:22:24
#knew #injured #beat #Relief
