This is why it’s so hard to quit and so easy to dream.
When Rafael Nadal’s tennis career ends, there is absolutely nothing he will experience that compares to battling on an acre of red clay, in front of more than 12,000 Spanish loyalists (and Zinedine Zidane) who are hanging on his every shot.
And then comes the moment when, after an hour-and-a-quarter, that crucial first set down to its pivotal moment, he sees the ball coming to his backhand side with just enough float.
He knows he can do the thing he has always done.
He can take those few quick stutter steps and shift his hips and hunt that forehand that will seal this first-set tiebreak, on his fifth chance to get the lead he so desperately wants.
And he knows, as soon as he takes that inside-out rip, that it is done. He knows that ball is not coming back. Then he’s down in a crouch, punching at the air below his knees three, four, five times.
The screams of the crowd are rattling the metal roof of the Caja Magica, basically his country’s national stadium. It’s on and he can feel it: the rush of competition that he and those 12,000 want to feel just one more time, and then one more, and one more, because they know that when it’s gone, it’s never coming back.
Nadal rolled back the years in his win against the Australian (Clive Brunskill/Getty Images)
A week ago, in Barcelona, Nadal basically called it a day after losing the first set to Alex de Minaur, the increasingly powerful Australian roadrunner who reached the top 10 earlier this year.
On Saturday in the Spanish capital, Nadal came to play all evening against De Minaur, if that was what it would take.
It didn’t.
After a little more than two hours, he had the sort of win he has been working for since undergoing surgery on his left hip nearly a year ago and suffering another injury in that area in January on his first comeback attempt.
He had a 7-6 (8-6), 6-3 triumph over a top player on his beloved red clay. He had one more step on his journey to Paris next month, to try to win the French Open for a 15th time — or at least to feel what he felt on Saturday in the place that made him who he is.
It was “a great test,” Nadal said. “Let’s see how I recover.”
Nadal has said repeatedly that he will only play in Paris if he can compete the way he always has. Through a win and a loss in Barcelona, and his opening-round beatdown of a 16-year-old wildcard entrant named Darwin Blanch on Thursday in Madrid, Nadal said his injury-riddled body was not where it needed to be.
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Where does it need to be? Nadal wants to be able to dream, not just of getting a nice sendoff in the tournament and the stadium that has meant everything to him during his career. He wants to walk onto the court thinking anything is possible — that his body will be able to withstand somewhere between 21 and 35 sets of the most gruelling kind of tennis over 14 days.
“It’s not about winning or losing, it’s about going on the court with the feeling that I can fight,” he said after his emotional win on Saturday.
“If I can’t go on court and dream, even if it is the minimum, minimum percentage, for me it doesn’t make sense. I prefer all the memories that I have.”
This Saturday in Madrid gave him a little more hope that at some point in the next three weeks he is going to step onto a court knowing that when he pushes his foot down on the gas pedal, he will feel his engine rev just as he wants it to, enough to make him think some crazy thought about getting across a finish line.
It may only be a moment, but Nadal thrilled the crowd in Madrid (Julian Finney/Getty Images)
Make no mistake: Nadal remains a shadow of what he was at the peak of his powers. Soreness in the middle of his body has reduced him basically to hitting two second serves.
His feet barely leave the ground when he serves. In men’s tennis, getting so-called “free points” — aces and service winners — or inducing service returns that come back for an easy put-away (“plus-one” points) are the fruit that every player collects in bunches at some point in a match.
Nadal basically gets none of these now.
That means his serve is little more than a rally starter. It worked just enough against a sub-par De Minaur.
The Australian was tight at the beginning, knowing he was taking on Nadal and 12,000 of his closest friends. He could sense early on that this was a different version of Nadal than the one he faced in Barcelona. In the second game, Nadal ripped a forehand down the line to get his first chance to break De Minaur’s serve, then induced an error to take an early lead.
There was also an early confrontation with the chair umpire when Nadal was certain he had challenged a call, but the umpire ruled he had not raised his hand in time and instead played the shot. Nadal, who almost never takes on an official, railed at the umpire for more than a minute.
Very quickly, this match felt like far more than a dry run or a ceremonial sendoff in what could have been Nadal’s last competitive tour match in his country.
He had come to win.
“His level lifted,” De Minaur said of Nadal a few minutes after the end when he still seemed a bit dazed from enduring this unique crucible for the second consecutive week. “He was looking quite good out there if I may say.”
All things considered, he was.
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The Spaniard moves on in his journey to Roland Garros (Clive Brunskill/Getty Images)
A deep forehand-backhand combination to opposite corners brought the opportunity for him to rear back on his heel and crank an overhead, the kind of vintage Nadal pattern that will get the brains of the Rafa-faithful dancing with visions of a deep run in Paris. No longer able to hunt as many forehands, he ripped backhands across the court with some of his old ferocity instead.
There were points where he hit every kind of forehand and backhand, flat and sliced and lobbed, twirling with topspin, using every inch of the court and playing with the kind of variety he is going to need to compete at this level. When he needed to, he feathered the ball around the front of the court on angles that tested the sturdiness of De Minaur’s ankles.
Two points away from the win, Nadal tore into a backhand that fired past De Minaur as he moved onto the court. The ball had barely left Nadal’s racket when he let out a primal roar, as though he was releasing nearly a year-and-a-half of hurt, struggle and frustration in one moment.
What happens now?
Nadal’s body has proven so brittle in recent years that he is always a bad step away from the end, but anyone who watched him Saturday, or catches the highlights, or hears those roars and sees those fist pumps, now knows what is possible, at least for one afternoon in the Spanish capital, in a best-of-three match.
The next test is what happens when he wakes up in the morning, how his body feels after pushing it in a way he hasn’t in nearly two years by his estimation. Assuming that goes well, he will play again on Monday against a journeyman from Argentina named Pedro Cachin, who knows his way around a clay court, like most of his countrymen. Another test.
“It’s not about playing better, playing worse,” he said. “It’s about going on court with real hope. Then anything can happen.”
Whatever does happen, he will always have this Saturday afternoon in Madrid, in a stadium called the Magic Box.
(Top photo: Clive Brunskill/Getty Images)
