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THE DIFFICULTIES OF RAFA’S 22nd GRAND SLAM TITLE

by Bert A. Ramirez / June 8, 2022

Rafael Nadal raises his 14th La Coupe des Mousquetaires after winning yet another French Open title. (Photo from Pete Kiehart of The New York Times)

The numbers in the finals could be misleading. Rafael Nadal, after all, blitzed Norwegian rival Casper Ruud in the second-most lopsided of his 14 championship victories in the French Open, one of seven finals in Paris that he won in straight sets and one of three where he scored a bagel.

Nadal’s 6-3, 6-3, 6-0 victory over the 23-year-old Ruud almost a week ago is dwarfed only in lopsidedness by the Spanish superstar’s 6-1, 6-3, 6-0 romp over, almost incredulously, Roger Federer in the 2008 finals at Roland Garros, and is tied with his own 6-2, 6-3, 6-1 rout of Stan Wawrinka in the 2017 finals in terms of number of games given up.

But if one gets the impression that this is one of the easiest French Open titles, much less most trouble-free championships among the record-extending 22 Grand Slam titles Rafa has won, he is mistaken

This is because Nadal, just like he did at the Australian Open earlier in January this year, had to overcome numerous problems and what, at times, looked like insurmountable hurdles before coming out triumphant in the end.

First, after that dream-like victory in Melbourne where he wasn’t even certain of participating just a few weeks before the year’s first Grand Slam event, Nadal, just as he looked as good as new with 20 straight victories and three titles in as many tournaments punctuated by that Australian Open championship, suddenly suffered another injury: a stress fracture in his ribs in the semifinal of the BNP Paribas Open in March that he won against young compatriot Carlos Alcaraz, which partly contributed to his loss in the finals to American Taylor Fritz. That painful injury that made it hard for him to breathe forced Rafa to take a six-week break and miss most of the clay-court season before returning for the Madrid Open just before the end of April with hardly any practice.

He was beaten by Alcaraz in the quarterfinals of that tournament and, in the last event that he tried to use as tuneup before the French Open, the Italian Open in Rome, he was also beaten by Denis Shapovalov of Canada in the round of 16, and that’s where he suffered a recurrence of the left foot injury that sidelined him for the last half of 2021, the degenerative bone disease called Mueller-Weiss syndrome.

It was not surprising that going into the French Open, Nadal did not have the preparation, much less the health that he needed to perhaps be considered as even among the favorites at Roland Garros. He wasn’t only lacking in practice and competition, as it were, because of the health issues he suddenly had to deal with once more seemingly without respite but also in the requisite confidence that’s essential in any top-level sports competition for one to be at his best. Nadal, in fact, had to bring with him for the first time in Paris his long-time physician, Dr. Angel Ruiz Cotorro, to help manage his painful foot.

Cotorro had to inject Rafa’s left foot with a pain killer to enable him to play through the two weeks at Roland Garros, doing it daily 20 minutes before Nadal went on the court and keeping it numb for seven to eight hours. “We played with no feeling in the foot, with a (pain-killing) injection on the nerve. The foot was asleep, and that’s why I was able to play,” Nadal explained of the process he had to go through after his historic victory. “They blocked the sensory nerves at a distance… That was the only way to give myself a chance here. So I did it. And I can't be happier and I can't thank enough my doctor for all the things he did during all my tennis career, helping me in every tough moment.”

Besides his physical problems, what compounded matters for Nadal was his having been grouped in a loaded bracket, with the top half of his draw including six of the top 10 seeds that included himself, top-seeded defending champion Novak Djokovic, third-seeded Alexander Zverev, sixth-seeded Carlos Alcaraz, No. 9 Felix Auger-Aliassime and No. 10 Cameron Norrie. This virtual group of death projected him to face Djokovic in the quarterfinals, which, under normal circumstances, was already a daunting task. But Nadal not only beat Djokovic in a four-hour, 11-minute classic but also Auger-Aliassime just before that in the round of 16 in a five-set, four-hour, 21-minute marathon before hitting upon some good fortune of sorts when Zverev had to retire near the end of the second set in the semifinals against him after badly twisting and tearing the ligaments in his right ankle.

Still, Nadal had to defeat four of the top nine seeds in order to take his 14th Roland Garros title – No. 9 Auger-Aliassime, No. 1 Djokovic, No. 3 Zverev and No. 8 Ruud – the first man to do so in a major event since Roger Federer did it in his run to the Australian Open title in 2017.

Then, there were the heavy conditions at night that Nadal was forced to play under especially during his quarterfinals against Djokovic, prompting even Rafa’s coach, Carlos Moya, to criticize the tournament organizers for not giving Nadal enough “credit,” if not respect. “I wouldn’t say disrespect,” Moya said before Rafa beat Djokovic. “He has won the tournament 13 times, if he has a request, you should listen to him. He is part of the history of Roland Garros.” But as Toni Nadal himself said, it’s all about money as more TV money is earned by the organizers with the night-session matches, negating whatever advantage Nadal has during daytime matches. Almost everybody knows that Nadal plays better under the sun and in broad daylight, in contrast to a closed-roofed stadium, as he did against Aliassime and Zverev, as the ball bounces higher and the spin increases unlike in the latter conditions where the surface tends to become slower and his weapons are thus minimized.

“The conditions have been the slower conditions I played since long time ago here, because have been very humid this afternoon and if we had big humidity with indoor, the ball was super big and difficult to create a spin on the ball,” Nadal himself said after that abbreviated semis match against Zverev, which still lasted three hours and 13 minutes. “So I think the conditions were not the ideal (one) for me this afternoon or the way that I like to play normally here. That’s why I was not able to create the damage that I wanted over him, no?... But honestly under these conditions – well, when Sascha is playing well in any conditions, he’s an amazing player. Under these conditions, even was more difficult for me to put him away from the court, no? Because probably with these heavy conditions, he felt that my ball is not creating the impact that (it) normally creates against his forehand or against his backhand. For example, when I hit the forehand down the line or when I hit my forehand in and out for against his forehand, I mean, my ball was not bouncing as usual here, no? So he was able to recover well from that position. The same thing happens when I hit my ball against his backhand, that his backhand is probably the best of the tour today. So with (such) conditions, I was not able to push him back. He was able to hit a clean ball all the time, so (I) was surviving, a lot of surviving moments during that match.”

But Nadal was able to survive that handicap, as he did the in-game situations that presented themselves to him along the way and made it harder for him to annex this year’s title than it did during his other victories here, like in 2020 when he won his 13th La Coupe des Mousquetaires without even losing a single set. Against Auger-Aliassime, who’s now coached by his Uncle Toni, he had to survive a five-setter that ensued after the 21-year-old Canadian won the fourth set, only the third player to extend him to the limits at Roland Garros after Djokovic in the 2013 semifinals and John Isner in the first round in 2011. But Nadal proved equal to the challenge, as he has so many times at the red-clay courts in Paris. While leading 4-3 in the deciding set, he hit his trademark forehand for a winner down the line to set up two break points. He got the break on the second by chasing an Auger-Aliassime shot for a backhand winner before serving out the match by scoring the last four points of the ninth game to set up a quarterfinal match against Djokovic, as expected.

He then staged another classic Rafa show against his Serbian rival with an improbable fourth-set comeback that enabled him to clinch the match, which actually gave him his 23rd career win over a world No. 1. Down 0-3, 1-4 and 2-5 after having been broken early, he never flinched and gave up despite what looked like a certain Djokovic set win that would have forced a fifth and deciding set. He held for 3-5, then broke Djokovic in the next game before holding and eventually setting up a tiebreak. Then, after seeing the Serbian score three straight points in the tiebreak to narrow his 6-1 bulge to just 6-4, Nadal came up with the workmanlike shot that closed it out, a backhand that he set up by forcing Djokovic to go to the opposite corner with a deep shot that made it impossible for the latter to recover for that backhand return of his.

Before Zverev’s fateful retirement in the semifinals, Nadal also had to come from the depths to even take the lead as Zverev raced to a 3-1 lead in the first set. But Rafa broke back to eventually take a 5-4 lead and once the set turned into a tiebreak, it was Nadal’s legendary toughness under adversity that again broke through as Zverev led at four set points at 6-2 after scoring five straight points to overcome an early 2-1 Nadal lead. As he has often shown in his legendary career, however, the Spaniard would not be disheartened by four set points as he faced in this case. Slowly and patiently, Nadal tried to stave off Zverev’s huge advantage, working relentlessly to score five straight points of his own and unbelievably grab a 7-6 edge, finally closing it out at 10-8 with a spectacular passing forehand that whizzed past his German rival’s reach.

Against Ruud, of course, he also overcame the lone tight spot that he found himself in after being broken early in the second set, losing his serve at love with a double fault as he struggled with his serve to fall behind at 3-1. But what followed next was something that gave the world another glimpse of why Nadal may be the toughest and most indomitable rival on the tennis court, and, quite possibly, the greatest of all time, injuries and all. At 30-30 and Ruud serving for a 4-1 advantage, Rafa pounced on a forehand error by his young rival, who used to train at his academy just four years before, and then broke him on the next point. That started something seldom seen in all of tennis especially on the professional tour – a virtual avalanche where one player never allows his opponent to win another game. That break, which put Rafa back on serve at 3-2, started a string of 11 consecutive games won by Rafa as he clinched the second set and scored a bagel in the third, a repeat of the 2020 French Open finals where he did the same to Djokovic in the opening set in spectacular fashion before holding his arch-rival off in the third and clinching set.

When the Spaniard finished off the victory with a backhand down-the-line winner, Ruud – and the whole world – knew this guy belongs up there in rarefied air in terms of the ability to produce in clutch situations and overcome adversity.

With his latest Grand Slam victory in Paris, Nadal has thus won again 17 years after first accomplishing the feat as a long-haired and sleeveless-shirted 19-year-old wiz kid back in 2005, a stretch that’s long enough to have seen contemporaries like Juan Martin del Potro, Tomas Berdych, David Ferrer, Maria Sharapova and now, Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, retire even at a relatively young age.

Rafa is shown with his 14 French Open titles. (Photos from STF, Agence France Presse and Getty Images)

“For me, (to) have this trophy next to me again means everything, no?” Rafa said after his landmark feat, which put him two slams ahead of both Djokovic and Federer. “So, yeah, have been emotional victories, without a doubt, unexpected in some way. Yeah, very happy, no? Have been a great two weeks, honestly, no?

“I for sure never believed I would be here at 36 being competitive again, playing in the most important court of my career one more time in the final. It means a lot to me, means everything. It just means a lot of energy to try to keep going.”

But though Nadal expressed his desire to play at Wimbledon later this month, he said there’s no guarantee he can do so as he doesn’t intend to go through the pain-killing injections or play again with a numb foot. After having gone back to Barcelona earlier this week, he underwent a procedure known as radio frequency ablation, in which radio waves were sent through a hollow needle inserted into the nerves in his left foot that are causing his constant pain. If the procedure works, which is not guaranteed, the heat from the radio waves could prevent the nerves from sending pain signals to his brain.

“If that works, I’m gonna keep going,” Rafa said before the procedure. “If that does not work, then it’s gonna be another story. And then I’m gonna answer to myself, I’m gonna ask myself about if I am ready to do a major thing without being sure that the things are going the proper way, for example. A major surgery that don’t guarantee me to be able to be competitive again and it’s gonna take a long time to be back.” That of course has been seen in the case of Federer, who at 40 is still recovering from another knee surgery he underwent several months back.

For Rafa, however, what he just did was another milestone that he keeps notching. He has not only won another French Open in a way that may not be as spectacular as he did in the past but he has also demonstrated an unmatched greatness in overcoming the odds while doing it, in the process winning the year’s first two slams for the first time in his career despite all the hurdles he had to surpass.

At this point, he’ll go down as one of the toughest competitors ever seen in any sport and has now secured a lofty place there among the immortals whose names will always be remembered and revered, regardless of whether he can still add to those 22 Grand Slam titles or not. As Joel Drucker said in tennis.com, “At Roland Garros, once again, here is Nadal, like no one in tennis history, simply and powerfully occupying an eternal presence.” An eternal presence, indeed, in sporting history.

Rafa’s team and family, which includes his parents and wife Mery as well as coach Carlos Moya, celebrate his latest victory. (Photo from Eurosport)

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