By Chris Oddo | Monday May 1, 2017
He's in pole position as the road to Roland Garros heads for Madrid, but where will be be in six weeks?
Photo Source: AFP
After losses in the Australian Open, Acapulco and Miami Open finals in the first three months of the 2017 tennis season, there was a feeling of disappointment sprinkled with a whole lot of hope for Rafael Nadal. No, the Spaniard did not manage to win his first hard-court title since 2014, or his first major title since the spring of that same year, but in returning to the final of a major for the first time in nearly three years—on his second favorite surface, no less—Nadal had announced himself as a major player in 2017.
Video: The Ten Greatest Clay-Court Achievements of Rafael Nadal
Conveniently the rest of the field, save for the miracle that is Roger Federer, looked like less of a major player.
Never mind that the Spaniard has suddenly lost his ability to absolutely thrash Federer on a tennis court, regardless of surface, because what the 14-time major champion achieved in the season’s first three months, when viewed in a longer perspective, has set the table for a clay-court season for the ages.
And that is quite a considerable development especially when one factors in the struggles of the tour’s top-two players and the reluctance of Federer to place heavy emphasis on winning on clay. Federer will show up for Roland Garros after skipping all lead-up events (we think), a sign that his heart and mind is already making the journey to Wimbledon.
It’s all playing into the hands of a resurgent Nadal, and thus far he’s taken full advantage of the opportunity by rolling to titles in his familiar stomping grounds of Monte-Carlo and Barcelona.
On Sunday Nadal beat back his biggest challenge of the clay season when he outclassed Dominic Thiem in the final, wrestling control of the match from the young Austrian late in the first set and never giving it back as he took eight of the final nine games—another exclamation point in a yet-to-be finished chapter of Nadal’s glorious clay court career.
Quintessential Nadal, as May dawns? Sounds like a familiar script, doesn’t it?
In two weeks’ time Nadal has claimed the all-time record for clay titles and won his record tenth title at two prestigious events—nothing to scoff at—but it could end up paling in comparison to what Nadal might do over the next six weeks.
As good as Nadal has looked over the last two weeks—he’s won 20 of 21 sets in this 10-match winning streak—Nadal’s season will ultimately be judged on the one event that matters most: Roland Garros. Which means he has to find a way to continue to improve over the course of the next month and a half. As dominant as his form has been, he’ll have to be that much better to continue winning; it’s the nature of the beast and one of the trickiest tightropes to walk as a Grand Slam approaches. On one hand a player like Nadal wants to unleash all his fury each time he takes the court, but how can he simultaneously do that and save something for the finish line? And how can he stay healthy in the process?
We all know what happened last year. After winning Monte-Carlo and Barcelona Nadal picked up a wrist injury at Madrid. He would put on a brave, determined face for the remainder of the clay season, despite losses to Murray in the Madrid semifinal and Djokovic in the Rome quarterfinal, but ultimately he had to withdraw from Roland Garros before his third-round match.
Never has there been a more shocking injury withdrawal (right in the middle of what many were envisioning as a title run), and it will likely weigh on Nadal as he prepares his mind, body and spirit for the ultimate Decima.
Nadal wisely told a reporter that he never thinks about Roland Garros until he has played Madrid and Rome, and that sense and appreciation for the here and the now will likely free him from distraction over the next three weeks. But don’t think for a second that he doesn’t know where this is all headed. This is a guy with nine Roland Garros trophies we are talking about. He knows every square meter of the road to Roland Garros—he could drive it with a blindfold on.
He’s in bristling form now, but the rest of the field will really need to worry if Nadal is able to get through the next month with his health intact, because this is a man that is in a perfect place to execute one of his trademark quests. Nadal may have endured a crisis of confidence in year’s past, but the bedrock that he put down this winter when he surged on the hardcourts, combined with the hunger it unleashed when he was not able to win, are coming together like the perfect storm.
Nadal’s disappointment in Australia was big, no doubt. To be a set from a 15th major and fall short is the type of thing that could kill a player. But not Nadal, not this season. Any disappointment was surely tempered by the gravity of the future and what a return to form on hard courts might mean for him when the spring arrived, when he could come home to the clay.
People are pretty sure that Roger Federer is and always will be the tennis GOAT. That may be true, but it doesn’t mean that Rafael Nadal can’t send a very stern message to all who may have wondered or written him off as he struggled with health and confidence and the rise of Djokovic, Murray and Wawrinka.
If there was one man on one surface that ever embodied the blood, sweat and tears of tennis, it is Rafael Nadal. You can’t choose a GOAT based on one surface, but if it was permissible, the Spaniard on clay would be far and away the greatest of all-time.
But his work on the surface is so far from done and he knows it. Lying in wait is the biggest opportunity he may ever have to win a tenth Roland Garros title. As unfathomable as it is—as unfathomable as all his success on the surface has been—he’s in the process of writing the most compelling chapter.
The beginning was brilliant, but can the middle and end be even better?
There’s a lot to be written in a very short period, and there’s still a lot we don’t know about the state of his competition. Novak Djokovic and Andy Murray have been a non-factor on clay thus far in 2017, but they’re dangerous for two reasons: One, they’re the two players who played the Roland Garros final last year and, two, both have had lots of rest in recent months.
Could Djokovic and Murray hit their peak when Nadal just starts to run out of gas?
Are there clay assassins lying in wait, such as Stan Wawrinka, Dominic Thiem, Kei Nishikori—the list goes on and on, and Nadal’s mission will be to reach, and maintain, a scintillating enough form so that none of them can stand between his teeth and the cold, hard metal of the Coupe des Mousquetaires.
Nadal is currently back in Mallorca, refueling. This could be his last moment to take a deep breath—a calm before the storm. What lies ahead is undoubtedly the type of moment he has lived for his whole life. A chance to ride a giant wave of inspiration and perspiration through Europe. Let the distractions slip away, while the dream comes into focus.
When you’re born for it, you live for it. And when you live for it you don’t think about the meaning. Just see the ball and hit the ball, each day better, and with more mind-bending topspin, than the last.
He may get the tenth Roland Garros title, he may not. It’s not certain, but what is certain is that the tennis community will be watching with intense interest. Pundits, players, historians, even haters (are there any?) will all be on board. As the road rounds the bend and heads for Madrid, Nadal is once again in pole position. But there’s a long way to go before the year of Federer also becomes the year of Nadal.