Forehand, Fight, Farewell

The moment everyone has been predicting (and some wanting) for almost 20 years is not far. A broken clock is right twice a day but speculating when Nadal will call it a day can only be right once. And that day might be near.

Nadal is in pain. It is easy to tell when he’s in pain—he always is. What’s not easy is telling how much pain he is in. There’s usually a grimace here, a limp there. He tries to fix what is wrong by himself, only to realize he won’t be able to before calling for assistance.

So, when Nadal calls for a medical timeout in the middle of the second set, one isn’t completely sure what will happen. It is clear that he is hampered. His service speeds are down, and his backhand is breaking down.

The gap in play prompts the commentators to speak about what lies ahead for Nadal. Not that they needed an excuse anyway. Rafa’s retirement talk has been in people’s mouths for a long, long time, like a bubblegum that won’t be spat out.

His father, Sebastián, signals from the player’s box, urging him to quit. Nadal doesn’t consider it. In a few months’ time, Nadal will become a father for the first time. Whether he’d prefer his son doing what he does now, we don’t know.

And in the middle of all this, trying to keep his focus, is Taylor Fritz.

If you were to build the perfect tennis player, you’d take Federer’s serve, Nadal’s forehand and Djokovic’s backhand. If you were to mass produce tennis players, you’d build Taylor Fritz a million times. He has a strong serve and powerful groundstrokes, though lacking in finer skills like touch and nimble movement. Standing at 1.96 meters, he looks like an ideal tennis player even if he isn’t one.

In Philippe Chatrier, Nadal plays like he was born with a Roland Garros in his mouth. He bends clay to his will like a potter. John Wick doing a single man demolition job on a legion of assassins on the streets of Paris was believable because we’ve seen Nadal do it. Not once. Not twice. An always repeating but never repeatable 14 times.

But in London, invincibility is invisible. Since his first reign at SW19 in 2008 as a boy who wore his heart on his sleeveless shirt, Nadal has won one title, endured one heartbreak, lost to a few randoms, been beaten by a man who should be treated as a random, and withdrawn three times.

Nadal doesn’t hit the ground running in centre court like he did in his yesteryears. He hits the ground and cannot run, usually because of knee pain. And his dense clay schedule. In the months leading up to Wimbledon, Nadal plays 3 Masters 1000, 1 500 and 1 slam. And he plays in every single final. All with a target on his back, unlike anything any player has ever faced on any surface. It takes a lot out of him. Clay suits his spin. Grass does not suit his knees.

Nadal might not win another Wimbledon. Heck, he might not win this game. He might retire at the start of the third set. Or he might lose, trying to chase down balls that his body simply won’t let him reach. Anything is possible and everything is uncertain.

What is certain is the will to win on grass. Though it hasn’t always been reciprocated, Nadal loves this tournament. And thus, a set behind, he steps up to receive Fritz’s serve at 4-3. He stands in his typical return position. Miles behind the baseline. Miles behind the game.

Fritz’s serve says more about America than Thanksgiving weekend, Super Bowl Sunday or Suburban lifestyle. Nadal has to get a grip on his 130 mph monsters. And he has to do that with a numbed right foot and a useless right abdomen, torn 7mm deep.

The bad thing about this tear, apart from the tear itself, is it prevents Nadal from loading his hips while serving. His ball toss gets low and speeds, lower. He also can’t put his weight on a backhand drive. He has to slice his way through.

The good thing about this tear is it hasn’t touched the greatest shot in tennis history: his forehand. It is the one shot that unties things that are knotted together and ties up things that are dangling loose. And it had a lot to tie.

At this point, Nadal’s plan is simple: see the ball, hit a forehand. Sometimes the ball in his backhand corner. He just slices it back and waits for the next forehand. If it is short, he pulls the trigger. But only with his forehand. If it is deep, he pushes Fritz deeper. He camps in the ad court conceding acres of deuce space. He mixes his strokes and keeps Fritz adjusting and readjusting. He is focused on doing the things he did well, very well.

And it works, at least for a while. After holding onto his serve like a bad crypto investment, Nadal breaks Fritz at 6-5* to take the second set.

But for all his skill, Nadal isn’t Steffi Graf. He can’t slice thigh to hip high balls all day. Nor should he. It inevitably leaks errors and with a couple of misfiring forehands, Fritz takes the third set, hitting a few convincing winners of his own. Nadal’s body is full of cracks and Fritz tries to slip through them.

Physical discomfort either makes your whole game cleaner and simpler or permeates through every single shot. Here it does both for Nadal.

Most points Taylor won were purely down to his potent serve and Nadal’s platter of a serve. But for the first time, he has had the edge on rallies. Nadal may or may not have gotten worse but Fritz’s getting better as the game goes on.

Nadal sternly goes into his routine. He wipes the bare, grassless baseline of Centre Court with his feet, brushing away the bad points along with it. Between the adjustment of his socks, lined up water bottles, pre match intimidation runs and conscientious face touches, his most vital routine has always been his cross court forehand.

The first thing they teach in tennis is to never hit a shot short. Nadal lands his shots inside the service box more than most. What are decent spots to land a second serve are his forehands’ default spot. But before an opponent tries to attack it, they are already out—out of the picture and out of the singles court. His unique angles pull them wide and places them in places where you find Leo Messi in football data charts.

Balls move sideways. Balls move upwards. But never together. Unless it comes from the old man’s geometry defying forehand.

And it isn’t a one-off party trick. A semi deep backhand return meets the same forehand, pulling them even wider and sending the ball even higher, over and over until the shoulder falls off its hinges. A pattern so relentlessly rhythmic that it’d wake the Dune sandworms up.

The sandworm here is Nadal’s forehand down the line. Each CCFH is set up for that. It all came to life from that fourth set.

If Nadal’s shots on grass don’t get the same kick as it does on clay, that’s okay. While his forehands have enormous spin, enormous spin alone isn’t his forehand. His technique has constantly evolved, and range has constantly expanded.

Talent is not just freak hand eye coordination to hit highlight reel shots. Talent is discipline. Talent is how you deal with life. Nadal has had to rebuild his swing around his injuries. He has had to rebuild what was already a world beating shot when he came into the circuit to conquer all circuits.

Switching technique is a process of habit development and habit suppression. It is rewriting muscle memory at a state where the brain is at its busiest, trying to keep up with the arousal levels that happen due to a change. The brain just wants to go back. But Nadal never went back. And this isn’t with his forehand alone. His serve, backhand, movement and gameplay have all shifted with time. Maybe muscle memory isn’t a thing when all your muscles are quasi destroyed.

Resisting impulses to not change is talent. That is fight. Not just running hard to get balls back.

So, Nadal changes, hitting ever more aggressively than before. He breaks Fritz in the first game of the fourth set, thanks to his cute net play and Taylor’s trampoline volley. Then Fritz breaks back, which at this point is a given. They exchange one more break back before they find themselves deadlocked at 5-5. For Nadal right now, his forehand is his serve. It is the gateway to free points. He doesn’t set up for a down the line shot anymore. The worm wakes up, driven by its own will.

Leading 15-0 while receiving, Nadal’s forehand assortments are in full display. He takes a weak, knee level second serve and sends a high, loopy return dipping at Fritz’s toes. Fritz scrambles, barely managing to plod the ball back. It’s slow and low—perhaps tricky for lesser players. But Nadal blasts it.

Then, having worked his way up to a break point, Nadal is pushed into defense by a 132 mph Fritz serve. All he does is stay in the point with his forehand. He slices down the line. He slices cross court and Fritz, not dealing well with the variety lands a backhand short. That is all Nadal needs.

Give his forehand the time to breathe and it’ll breathe fire. He gains control of the point for the first time and forces an unforced error from Fritz who hits a Hail Mary down the line backhand. Whether he wants to attack with it or whether the opponent doesn’t want to get anywhere near it, Nadal’s forehand determines the playing area. The game rests in the racquet in his left hand, even if the ball isn’t in it.

He holds to love to go 2 all into the fifth.

After a few trademark Wimbledon holds from Fritz, Nadal seizes a few second serves at 3-3 and has the advantage. He hits a good return off a normal second serve, inducing a normal backhand from Fritz but in the blink of an eyelid he unleashes his trademark down the line with a grunt. Forget serve plus one. This is return plus one. Fritz could only parry it. Nadal goes to the net like a suicidal fish and finishes with a drop shot smoother than VPN ad transitions in a YouTube video.

Hard and soft. Piston and pillow.

He leads, but there’s an air of scare, like there are 20 minutes left in a House episode.

Over the years, Nadal went from wanting to hit one shot more than the opponent to trying to hit one less shot himself. If young Nadal fought, old Nadal fights to avoid a fight he knows he can’t win. He is winning rallies that extend over 10+ shots, but the fight is not against Fritz. It is against his body.

Because of this very impulse to shorten points the longer the game went on, Nadal concedes a soft break back. All game Nadal has not hit one backhand in anger. He has hit them in pain. What was once a cakewalk shot is still a cakewalk–only now, he’s broke and hungry and forced to walk on the cake. It is not the match winner it usually is. It isn’t even a factor.

Nadal’s backhand has had the same misfortune as Nadal outside clay in that earth bending excellence in one quality means the other isn’t hyped enough. His backhand is a lesser shot only when compared to his forehand. But what isn’t?

54% of his backhands so far were slices. Only three times in his career has he hit more slices than drives. The remaining two were against Medvedev–a clear plan against someone who can’t generate casual power. But in the fifth set, he was keen on bringing the numbers down.

So, at break point down, when he saw a hip level, ideally paced ball in his BH wing, he decided to not for once drill it like a careful tenant under a micromanaging landlord. But it slams into the middle of net.

Advantage lost. A final set tie breaker looms.

This won’t be Nadal’s ultimate five-set match in 2022. It won’t be his most memorable quarterfinal win here, either. The discomfort in his abs isn’t his most painful Wimbledon moment. And there’s a good chance this victory he so wants won’t lead anywhere. Yet, right now, this is the only thing matters.

Fritz made a grand total of one unforced error all tie break. One. And yet, he finds himself 3* – 8 down, rinsed completely by Nadal’s primary and at this point, only weapon. The next point is a TLDR of the entire match.

Wimbledon’s sideline area is the biggest of all slam centre courts. Baseline area, not so much. Still, Nadal stands well outside the court, finding area like a real estate company outside city limits. Fritz fires a nice second serve to Nadal’s backhand but Nadal, always a heartbeat away from a forehand, converts it and from the trenches, sends a deep return and pushes Fritz immediately back. For a few balls, Nadal gets no look at a forehand. But he entices a backhand from Fritz into his preferred corner.

Fritz is waiting for another cross-court forehand. The shot Nadal has hit more than any other all day. The shot that sets everything up. The first of his shots, the last of his shots. The shot that cries wolf. And just as Fritz sets himself up in the ad court to receive one, Nadal switches pattern and hits a down the line winner. The only wolf here is Nadal’s wand of a left forehand that has slayed fellow goats.

Match point, Nadal.

Although he has the ad court and lefty advantage, Nadal goes down the line for one of his fastest serves of the match. Fritz could only prod it at full stretch straight into Nadal’s hitting arc.

Fritz knows the shot Nadal would hit. He knows where the ball would land. He knows how it’d move. Yet, there is nothing he could do about it. Nadal finishes the match with his buggy whip forehand, high and around his head.

He has stayed in that position for two decades.

Under the late London lights, the shadows are lengthening on an unparalleled career. Nadal is more relieved than cheery. His celebrations are quiet. Nadal can be quiet, but Nadal cannot be stopped. It’s clear from his efforts that he’d do this forever if he could.

The romance doesn’t give up as easily as the body does.

**********************

The romance finally gave up. That evening would be the last time he stepped on Centre Court. It would be the last time we ever saw Nadal play slam worthy tennis. For the past two years, his career has felt like a camera panning across a black screen—you can’t tell if it’s moving at all.

As he prepares to say goodbye at a tournament where he has an improbable record, we can expect a few things. Davis Cup is not what it used to be. Nadal is not who he used to be. But there will be fight.

If someone doesn’t associate Nadal with fight, they probably know nothing about tennis. If someone associates only fight with Nadal, they definitely know nothing about tennis.

To home in on fight alone is to risk disregarding so much else.

There will be tears, there will be emotions but there will also be a passage of play. It may last an entire tournament, or it may last for just a couple of games.

A passage of play where Nadal will play tennis with fine-tuned magic that only he could produce. There will be an extended grunt winner that leads into a cry of Vamos. A roof raising banana passing shot. A no look skyhook. An inside out winner that sinks an already suffocated opponent. A run to the net made with more calculations than Euclid.

For it is in his soul. It will never leave him. It will never leave us.