Getting It

Note: I’ve been trying to make my tennis writing about more than tennis recently. It’s a learning process. This is a sequel of sorts to this piece.

There is a difference between getting it and getting it. Five days ago, Rafael Nadal beat Daniil Medvedev from two sets down to win the Australian Open final. Medvedev got it, because he had beaten Felix Auger-Aliassime in a similar way two rounds earlier. But he didn’t get it, because he had never and has never won a major final from two sets down, or even won a close match at that stage.

Getting it is comprehending what’s going on, because you see something that makes sense. Getting it is understanding the ins and outs, because you yourself have been there.

*****

No professional tennis player has avoided a heartrending loss. Heartbreaking near-misses can be learned from, but they have to be felt. It’s impossible to learn how to climb out of the pit if you’ve never been low enough to see the bottom of its walls. It’s a process, and not an easy one — the loss hurts, sometimes so badly that it takes a while before the player is ready to climb. Take Denis Shapovalov, who lost to Djokovic in the semifinals at Wimbledon and spent the next several months floundering well below the level he was capable of playing at. Shapovalov’s loss was in straight sets, even! At this Australian Open, he made the quarterfinals, had Nadal on the ropes early in the fifth set, then folded. He was over the pain of the Wimbledon semis, maybe, but whether he learned anything from the match is yet to be seen.

Getting it is such a long, layered process that anyone not at a GOAT-level is probably a few steps away. There are so many lessons to learn in tennis. Perhaps an infinite number. There is the pressure of winning, then the pressure of backing up wins. There is the pressure of keeping your head to win the matches you’re supposed to and the pressure of preparing well enough to win the matches you aren’t. The pressure of satisfying the crowd if they like you and ignoring them if they don’t. You have to resist burnout, to tune out the media. You have to find a balance between the full-time grind of the tennis tour and your “personal life.” And that’s just the abstract stuff. The X’s and O’s of actual play are their own disaster, especially in bad matchup situations. Just ask Matteo Berrettini, Nadal’s opponent after Shapovalov. More precisely, ask his backhand.

Who out there hasn’t been absolutely leveled, at one point or another, by at least one of these challenges? Federer has choked; Serena has struggled recently in major finals. Nadal can’t stay healthy. Djokovic shoots himself in the foot time and again for a variety of reasons. And these are the lucky ones, relatively speaking. Every other active singles player has suffered exponentially more.

What must that be like? When you reach number one, it’s not even the end of the road, it’s the beginning of a new challenge: staying there. Oh, and make sure you have a major before you get to the top spot, because the media won’t let you hear the end of it if you don’t. (Condolences to Dinara Safina and Caroline Wozniacki in particular.) Tennis is a game about errors. Consistency is always difficult, but playing on wildly different surfaces against wildly different opponents while traveling all over the place makes it a near-impossibility. And yet, when a player wins a major and then fails to win the next one, they’re not surface-versatile, or they’ve lost motivation. How can a player maintain a love for tennis in this aggressive atmosphere?

The short answer is that I don’t know. When a tennis player celebrates an illustrious win like Nadal did this past weekend, I can marvel at his apparently pure joy and be happy for him, but I’m a spectator. I don’t know how it feels. (Don’t bother asking the champions, they won’t tell you.) When Novak Djokovic says that Wimbledon grass tastes like sweat and dirt but also sweet like victory, I tend to think yeah, but…sweat and dirt are gross, dude. To change the taste, you must have had to change the biological makeup of the grass with your happy emotions alone- ohhhh, wait. It’s very difficult to identify with, because while I know that he must be feeling something incredible, I have no idea what that feeling might be.

Andre Agassi’s autobiography Open offers a fairly comprehensive breakdown on how he felt after winning his first major: 

"Waves of emotion continue to wash over me, relief and elation and even a kind of hysterical serenity, because I've finally earned a brief respite from the critics, especially the internal ones."

This is easier to get in touch with — I have had moments when happiness flowed through me in waves. Still, I’ve never faced the great expectations Agassi did, never had it drilled into me from toddler-age that I must be the best in the world at something. I see how he feels. I can understand why he feels that way. But I don’t get it.

This is a different phenomenon than, say, listening to a four-year-old talk about how they can’t wait for Santa Claus to come on Christmas. You know the idea of Santa Claus is bullshit, but you didn’t always, which counts for a lot. Though the knowledge you gain as you age destroys your innocence beyond hope of revival and you will never believe in Santa Claus again, you vaguely remember what it was like to believe once. You didn’t always question what you were told. “Logic” was once a funky-sounding word instead of a concept. You get the Santa illusion, even if you aren’t fooled by it anymore and can never take the glasses off. Relating to a tennis champion is way harder. I’ve never even had the privilege of dreaming about winning Wimbledon.

Even a bit of experience doesn’t necessarily teach someone what they need to know. Nadal had played in five Australian Open finals before last weekend — all kinds of matches, from getting demolished to winning narrowly to losing even more narrowly. When he couldn’t serve out the final from 5-4, 30-love in the fifth, he was so shaken by the flashbacks that he said the word “fuck” when talking about the moment on Eurosport. I was once at a running camp, and a nutritionist came to talk to us. You have to try a food at least ten times before you can be sure you like it, she said. I truthfully told her that I didn’t have that much toughness in me and jokingly asked if there was a drug I could take to suppress the gag reflex. There was not. I wasn’t being totally sarcastic — I tried mashed potatoes for the first and last time eleven years ago, spat them into the sink, and vowed never to eat them again. (I have stuck to this.) Experience can breed bad memories as easily as it can offer lessons, and gagging up mashed potatoes is very low on the anguish scale.

*****

There are so many possible permutations of how a tennis match can go, a staggering number of hurdles that can be tripped over, that it’s no wonder each tennis career is so different. Again, even the GOATs have scars carved into them by losses that would make the devil wince. A player can be proficient in one area and never master the others. What of the players who didn’t have the fortune to grow up at a slightly-to-medium tall height and weren’t born with prodigious talent? What must it be like to live on the tour knowing your game is severely limited, and that to an extent, you can never improve, just maximize the tools you already have? Reilly Opelka and Diego Schwartzman walk the earth knowing they will never lift a major title. For different reasons, sure, but how do you reconcile that with the responsibility of trying your hardest?

In the middle of the Australian Open, I wrote at length about how I felt for Adrian Mannarino. I wasn’t sure how he would cope mentally with playing some of the best tennis of his career only to get demolished by Nadal. Well, Mannarino is now playing the Open Sud de France. He just opened his title bid with two clinical straight-set wins. I can’t wrap my head around how he’s doing it. Is it love for the game that enables players to keep going like this? If so, how can that love possibly persist as the game tells the player time and again that it doesn’t love them back?

Fernando Verdasco has just played the match of his life in the 2009 Australian Open semifinals. He hit 95 winners against Nadal, possibly the best defender ever. He hit two double faults in the first 58 games of the match. He hit two more in the last game, one on match point. He lost the best match he ever played. He will not play this well again, not by a long shot. Screenshot: Australian Open YouTube Channel

As fans, we have the privilege to watch whatever match we want, then choose to continue following the winner later in the tournament or not. The loser has to process their loss, decide what it means and whether they should care, then go back to training and try not to lose again in the same way. Even the very best players lose at more tournaments than they win. Think about it too hard and on a purely philosophical level, playing professional tennis seems like a nightmare. (For many, it’s also a financial nightmare.)

*****

At 2-all and break point in the fifth set of the Australian Open final, Nadal did one of the craziest things I’ve ever seen. He ran down a forehand down the line from Medvedev and slammed the ball back down the same line. The ball was in by an inch or so. Medvedev started walking as it blazed past him. Not to get to the ball, to walk to his chair for the changeover. It wasn’t the shot that amazed me so much; Nadal has hit that forehand hundreds of times. It was the fact that he decided to hit it. Nadal had been winning essentially every rally in the preceding minutes — if he got Medvedev’s serve back, he was winning the point the vast majority of the time. The play, very obviously, was merely to keep the ball between the lines and Medvedev would misfire or hit a sitter. Yet Nadal decided to go for one of the riskiest shots imaginable. The decision was completely bizarre to me. Why walk a tightrope when you can cross a bridge? But I’ve never been in a moment like that, I’ve only watched them. Rafa’s been there before, and for whatever reason, he decided that a Hail Mary of a forehand was the best shot to hit under the circumstances. It made no sense to me, but it did to him, and that wound up being all that mattered.

It feels important, my inability to get it. Not that it’s a failure on my part — I think anyone who hasn’t been there is in the same boat as me — but for some reason, it’s meaningful to me that I describe my detachment well. I read my favorite writers while drafting this piece — Juan José Vallejo, Louisa Thomas, Brian Phillips. I stumbled across a new one: Rembert Browne. Grantland might have been one of the best things to ever exist. I listened to “Breathing Underwater” on repeat, a song that begins with intensity, making me anticipate the chorus from the beginning. Is this my life? When I am sitting and listening and reading Rembert Browne tell a story about the Super Bowl (an event I do not care about and have not in years) well enough that I am feeling genuine suspense despite the event in question happening seven years ago, I feel, for just a moment, that I get something essential, even if I’m not sure what it might be.

The moment is not eternal. Metric, the band, tells me that I should never meet my heroes. On Sunday, Nadal served for the final at 5-4, 30-love. He got broken, then broke back immediately for 6-5. He won a long rally to go up 15-love. I started to cry. I felt the history of Nadal’s near misses in Melbourne, and how tenuous his window was to grab a second title, and all I could think was for the love of God, man, would you please serve this out?! He did. It was a nice moment. Today, he tweeted about beginning an NFT project with a company called Autograph. This is annoying because NFTs are often bad for the environment, and anything that has selling a digital Pokémon card with Logan Paul’s face on it for tens of thousands of dollars under its umbrella is just very dumb in general. Next, Nadal retweeted Autograph’s tweet, which was asking people to sign up to be the first to know about Nadal’s upcoming project. Not to take part in it, to be the first to know about it. Is this my life?

*****

Tennis is an incredibly complex game, and that word extends beyond the on-court competition. There are advantages, disadvantages, setbacks, “Get Out of Jail Free” cards. There is a starting point and a destination. Everything in between is chaos. All the participants are playing on the same board, but everything from speed of movement to direction varies wildly between those who take part. It is endlessly devoid of logic. I’m not complaining — I find the vexing nature of the sport fascinating, and stumbling upon a seemingly correct conclusion all the more rewarding for it. But it’s interesting to think that I’ve been glued to the game tennis players engage in for years now, and I get it, because I’ve been watching intently, but I don’t get it, because I’m not playing the game myself.

Tennis Origin Story #18: Aoun Jafarey

By Aoun Jafarey

“Is this a bat?”

“No. It’s called a racket.”

“Can I play cricket with it?”

“Sure, you bat, I’ll bowl.”

I don’t remember if this is exactly how it started, but this was the conversation 3 year old me was having with my grandfather when he was showing me the last tennis racket he had ever bought. An Eminent, made in Sialkot, Pakistan. Wooden, strings worn out, small head, probably as tall as I was and about heavy as 2 of Federer’s frames. This is how I got into tennis.

My grandfather was a huge influence in my life, and perhaps the longest lasting influence he left on me is my love for this sport we call tennis. It didn’t come to me right away. How could it? Imran Khan wasn’t a tennis player, he was a cricketer. Pakistan hadn’t won the Davis Cup, Pakistan had just won the cricket world cup in 1992. I had just witnessed the final, I vaguely remember Ramiz Raja running after taking that final catch, the only people who are supposed to catch a ball in tennis are the ball kids so even that moment wasn’t relatable.

So what triggered my interest? Swinging an object at another object to attempt to send it into orbit. My coach was smart enough to realize that the child in front of him had no interest in tennis, his only interest was to try and hit a ‘six’, which is how you classify a shot in cricket in which the batsman is able to hit the ball over the boundary rope without it bouncing. How does that translate to tennis? Well, in tennis that’s called missing the court by a country mile. That is all I wanted to do, hit the ball as far away as possible. Little did I know how I was being baited by my coach at the time. We went from hitting it out of the park to “now hit the back wall” to “now hit the back wall and make sure the ball kid doesn’t stop it” to finally, “now make it bounce inside the baseline and hit the back wall without the ball kid being able to stop it”. This was the cricket and tennis hybrid that my coach used to bait me into eventually hitting the ball like a tennis player is supposed to.

I grew up playing on quick hard courts, the sort you’d never see on tour today. Big serve + forehand + slice was the way to go and it is what I learned. It worked great, I even managed to get a match win in the Pakistan Open as an 18 year old along with being ranked in the top 5 in my province on the men’s doubles side. I once had the honor of playing Aqeel Khan (https://www.atptour.com/en/players/aqeel-khan/k425/overview) within 2 years of his career worst beating he took at the hands of former AO finalist Fernando González (also one of my childhood inspirations); that I still think had angered him enough to give me the beating he did, a double breadstick, but you know what? As far as I’m concerned those were two perfect baguettes considering Aqeel was still ranked in the top 500 in the world at the time — and ranked #2 in Pakistan!

My choice of tennis arsenal over the years. The left racket is my current stick, the right is the one I played Aqeel Khan with 15 years ago. I was sent home with baked goods.

If I recall correctly that was the last time I played a national or provincial level tournament in Pakistan, it was all thanks to being inspired by my younger brother who wanted to play D1 at college which of course prompted me to raise my level. Neither of us ever got good enough to get to D1, but that doesn’t mean we’ve stopped trying to get better.

And how exactly is it that I keep trying to get better? Simple. I ask myself, what would Rafa or Novak do? And then just do what Tomic or Kyrgios would instead. Crazy as it sounds, for a club level player sometimes not taking yourself too seriously on the court is a great way to loosen up and play better. So as long as my body cooperates, I plan on holding onto my racket like my life depends on it. 

Australian Open Awards

By Owais Majid

The Australian Open has come and gone. It had us picking our jaws up off the floor on countless occasions, it had us destroying our sleep patterns the way Denis Shapovalov destroys his rackets and it delivered narratives at every turn. What better way of recapping it all than a look at the best and worst of the two weeks that were? So without further ado, grab your popcorn and settle in for the definitive end of tournament awards ceremony, Australian Open edition.   

Feel good story of the tournament: Alizé Cornet’s run to the quarter finals.

Going into the tournament, there was little to no attention on Alizé Cornet. If her name was mentioned at all before the tournament, it was that she would be the second round opponent of one of the favourites, Garbiñe Muguruza. Cornet beat Muguruza in emphatic fashion before backing that up with another solid victory over Tamara Zidansek in three sets. 

She then came through a gruelling encounter against Simona Halep in which both women were clearly finding the heat incredibly difficult to deal with. In her on court interview after that match, Cornet was understandably very emotional at having reached the quarter finals of a grand slam for the first time after 16 years of trying. She delivered one of the all time on court interviews as she and Jelena Dokic had an exchange which had Dokic and everyone else watching wiping their eyes. The goodwill towards her was already at a high and only increased. Although she went on to lose to Danielle Collins in the quarterfinals, Cornet left Melbourne with her head held high and having captured the hearts of many around the world.

All the quarterfinal emotions. Cornet celebrates after beating Halep in a war of attrition in the heat. Screenshot: Australian Open YouTube Channel

Breakthrough star: Maxime Cressy

Very few people were familiar with the name Maxime Cressy prior to this year but a month later he is almost a household name on the ATP Tour. After being edged out in the Melbourne final by Rafael Nadal, Cressy would have had people talking about him anyway, but his throwback serve and volley style meant that the spotlight on him was even brighter. 

With eyes on him at the start of the tournament, Cressy impressed by scoring a five-set victory over John Isner in the first round. He got as far as the last sixteen where he gave Daniil Medvedev all sorts of problems. He eventually lost out in four sets, in a match that had Medvedev visibly and audibly rattled by Cressy’s play style. That performance came as a bit of a surprise to all but Cressy himself, who aspires to become a world number one someday. He makes no attempt at hiding his own belief in his ability and it will be intriguing to see how Cressy gets on through the rest of the year, and if his game will allow him to excel.

Maxime Cressy puts away a volley to retrieve a crucial mini-break against Medvedev. Screenshot: Australian Open YouTube Channel

Disappointment of the tournament: Alexander Zverev.

Many people had earmarked Alexander Zverev as being the man who would bring an end to Rafael Nadal’s run at this year’s Australian Open (a take that aged like milk), but Zverev wasn’t even able to make it that far. Few could have seen his defeat to Denis Shapovalov in the round of 16 coming. Although Shapovalov is in his own right a solid player, Zverev was the heavy favourite going into their match due to the results he had put together in 2021. Whilst he has suffered unexpected defeats at grand slam events before, the tennis he had displayed at the back end of last year made this defeat especially disappointing. After winning gold at the Olympics and the year-end ATP finals, Zverev was regarded as one of the favourites for the tournament. As a matter of fact, he declared himself part of a new Big Three together with Medvedev and Djokovic (another take which hasn’t aged particularly well). Zverev was tipped to do so well here but once again, he failed to impress at a grand slam. A top-ten scalp at a major still eludes Zverev and he has only been successful against a top-20 opponent on four occasions. For someone who has done so well on the tour, this is hugely underwhelming. Thus, it’s difficult for me to look past Zverev as the disappointment of the tournament.

Surprise package of the tournament: Danielle Collins

Having only recently come back from a lengthy lay off due to having endometriosis surgery, few people were talking about Danielle Collins in any capacity going into the Australian Open. The fact that she was in the same half as Garbiñe Muguruza, Simona Halep and Iga Świątek meant that almost nobody predicted her to make a deep run here. Therefore her run to the final came as a major shock.  The tennis she was able to produce, beating one of the upcoming stars in Clara Tauson, Elise Mertens, an inspired Alizé Cornet and Iga Świątek along the way was nothing short of miraculous. That run of results would have been a seismic achievement under any circumstances, but given the severe nature of her surgery the magnitude of it is even greater. Even though she eventually came up short against Ash Barty in the final, she gave the champion a greater test than any of her previous opponents. 

Collins’ celebration after her semifinal win over Świątek was telling — it was the biggest victory of her life, and her reaction was businesslike. More work to do, she might as well have been saying. Screenshot: Australian Open YouTube Channel

Collins is one of those players who appears to fly permanently under the radar, however this run may prompt people to view her through a different lens going forward. Now a two-time grand slam semifinalist, she has proven that the initial run at the U.S. Open wasn’t just a fluke occurrence and she will fancy her chances for the rest of the year.  

Match of the tournament: Medvedev vs. Nadal

There’s absolutely no competition here. Let alone match of the tournament, Rafael Nadal vs. Daniil Medvedev will go down as one of the all time great grand slam finals. Rather than indulge you too much with my thoughts here, I’ll direct you towards the outstanding article Owen wrote at the conclusion of the match and to the equally excellent piece Scott produced discussing the championship points. There were plenty of other matches in this tournament which would have been genuine contenders in any other grand slam, but this one stands head, shoulders and entire body above everything that came before it. It’s a match we’ll talk about for years and probably decades to come.

The Australian Open has certainly got the tennis year off to a great start. Here’s hoping everything that follows will be similarly good.

Daniil Medvedev: Why The Kid No Longer Dreams

By Owais Majid

As journalists packed into Daniil Medvedev’s press conference after he suffered a heartbreaking loss at the hands of Rafael Nadal, they would probably have prepared questions to the effect of “What went wrong today?”, “What positives can you take from the match?” and other familiar inquiries that ostensibly follow a grand slam final loss. This was largely made redundant by what followed after the first question that was posed to Medvedev. 

Medvedev responded to a fairly standard question about how he and his coach analysed the match, by politely disregarding it before launching into a 4 minute monologue which contained the poignant words “Today that kid stopped dreaming.” But Medvedev wasn’t referring to his grand slam dream; he’s already won one of those. He wasn’t referring to his Australian Open dream; as Nadal himself remarked afterwards, he will almost certainly win multiple Australian Opens in his career. In fact, Medvedev made a point of not specifying what the dream was, but it was apparent to all that he was referring to the Australian crowds treatment of him. 

It’s fair to say that Medvedev has had his ups and downs with tennis crowds over the years. He has frustrated, amused and endeared himself to the public in equal measure but this tournament felt different. Even aside from the final, Medvedev wasn’t received particularly well. 

As was expected, he was the pantomime villain when he faced local boy Nick Kyrgios on the John Kane arena. He was the heavy favourite in every match up until the semifinals so the crowd – again understandably – were rooting for the underdog. When he faced Stefanos Tsitsipas in the semifinal the crowd was largely against him due to the substantial Greek contingent in Melbourne and on Sunday, almost all of the 11000 in attendance were supporting Nadal. 

I’d venture that Medvedev, a pretty self-aware person, would have completely understood all of this. However the packed Rod Laver arena may have overstepped the line on Sunday. 

It’s difficult to imagine how dispiriting it must be to receive no reaction when you do something spectacular but to get tumultuous cheers from thousands of fans when you make an error. That’s something the vast majority of us cannot begin to fathom but it was the reality for Medvedev. To compound what must already have been a pretty jarring experience, the climax of the match was arguably even more disappointed than what had come before it. After 5 and a half hours of providing entertainment that nobody is likely to forget for a very long time, the least Medvedev deserved was some appreciation, be it even a mere round of applause. Instead boos once more rang out and it baffles the mind as to why. Although it cannot have been pleasant, he may have been able to compartmentalise the manner in which the crowd acted during the match. 

The New York crowd at the 2019 US Open epitomised the perfect villain/fans relationship, and Medvedev would have been hoping for – maybe even expecting – something similar here. During his third round victory over Feliciano Lopez, it felt the like entire stadium turned on Medvedev after he had an unsavoury interaction with a ball boy. That this noise further intensified after the now famous “When you sleep at night, know that I won because of you” speech that Medvedev delivered in such charismatic fashion afterwards. By the end of that tournament however, the crowd had warmed to Medvedev to the point he was given as big a cheer as that which Nadal had received. That crowd recognised the role Medvedev was playing. They embraced him and he embraced them and it made for amazing tennis theatre. 

This, for me, was what Medvedev imagined would happen at the end of the battle with Nadal. In Australia though, the appreciation never came and this is what I believe saddened Medvedev deeply. As alluded to earlier, it’s near impossible for you or I to imagine the mental suffering such little adulation after performing such wonders can have. Purely on a human level, wouldn’t it be all of our dreams in some capacity at least, if any of us were good enough to perform our art in front of thousands, to be receive a standing ovation or a tumult of cheers? The distinct lack of this must have been so incredibly heartbreaking for Medvedev that it elicited the speech at the start of his press conference. Throughout the 12 minute English segment, he implicitly referenced how much he enjoyed being noticed, and inversely how much of a negative effect it had on him whenever he wasn’t and Sunday was just the culmination of all of this. 

Medvedev made another interesting point during his monologue about how the tennis world changed their tune. Speaking about the next gen, he said “There were talks like people saying we really want the young generation to go for it to be better and stronger and I was like pumped up. Well, I guess these people were lying because every time I stepped onto the court I really didn’t see many people who wanted me to win.” This made me think of another glaring contradiction many of us are guilty of. Large sections of both the media and wider public have bemoaned the lack of colourful characters on the circuit. For all their qualities, the impeccably behaved Federer and Nadal don’t provide the agro, the theatre that sport requires to attract greater audience. Once somebody like Medvedev comes along and provides that in droves, his behaviour is scrutinised to within an inch of his life and he is criticised to no end. By his own admission, some of his actions have been deplorable but Medvedev has on countless occasions acknowledged his flaws and vowed to improve. You’d think that all of the meme-able content he has given us over the years and all of the superb one-liners would result in more appreciation of him but alas, this hasn’t yet transpired.  

I sincerely hope that in the cold light of day, when he has had time to reflect, Medvedev’s view will change. Players often make irrational statements immediately after they have just experienced such an emotional rollercoaster of a match. In weeks to come, the despair may no longer be as severe as it is at the moment and we may once more see the Daniil Medvedev we’ve all become accustomed to. Crowds around the world will eventually warm to him, he’s too witty, too smart and too entertaining for them not to. Just as the New York crowd eventually fell in love with him in 2019, there is absolutely no reason why this should not be the case everywhere else.  He may be the black sheep at the moment, derailing the familiarity of the big three, but when they are gone and he can step out for their shadow, the sun will shine on the charismatic character the sport needs.

The kid needn’t stop dreaming just yet.

The Dream Is Dead?: Daniil Medvedev shares how he’s feeling in the post-match press-conference following his loss in the Australian Open final.

Baseline Tennis: The Unpredictability of Daniil Medvedev’s Serve

Daniil Medvedev is a huge server, but his serve is made even tougher by his willingness to go for powerful second serves. Not only that, but his toss is unreadable, and in a different way from Roger Federer’s — Medvedev’s serve direction seemingly has little to no correlation with where he tosses the ball. Rafa managed to break him seven times in five sets, but many other opponents have and will struggle more.

Watch until the end for a Popcorn Tennis promo (screams excitedly)! Watch at the clip below or on YouTube by following this link.

Tennis Origin Story #17: Siddhant Guru

By Siddhant Guru

Year 2007. I was only 8 years old then. Naturally, I don’t remember much of what I did at that age but rather surprisingly, one memory has always stuck with me.

In India, the summer season is terribly hot and humid, especially in May and early June. Starting from late April, we used to get almost two months of summer holidays in schools. The summers, apart from the delicious mangoes, are awful. It’s sweltering, you get sweaty in minutes and going out in the midday sun is a strict no-no. As a child, I was instilled with the belief that whatever my parents said was the Gospel. One of those gospels included, “Don’t go out during the afternoon. You will catch a heatstroke.” Considering mid-40 degree temperatures (Celsius! not Fahrenheit, you Americans!), it was the right advice. However, little seven-year-old me obviously didn’t have the mental capacity to understand that. So, what followed was me grumbling and unhappily sitting inside the house during the afternoons. I would lazily switch channels on TV to pass the time.

As I was switching channels one evening, I stumbled upon one match. Two players were hitting a ball over a net. I knew this was what they called “tennis”. My dad used to sometimes watch this weird sport. But I remember when my Dad used to watch, it was always played on a green surface. Yet here it was being played on a red one. Naturally intrigued, I kept watching it, not really understanding much, but I was surprisingly drawn towards it. Part of that was because the two players looked and played so differently. One was a lefty. The other was a righty. One had huge muscles swinging hard at the ball, the other kept moving silently across the court – every shot that he hit was visually different from the previous. One wore a sleeveless shirt with pirate pants and a bandana. The other wore half sleeved shirts and shorts.

As my intrigue grew about this weird sport, my mom called me out, asking me to go to a nearby store to get some grocery items. I was obviously unhappy but like I said, Mom’s words are the gospel. Just before I left for the store, I checked the score. I vividly remember that it was the left handed guy serving and the score was 40-40. 10 minutes later, I returned from the store and immediately went to watch the match again. The left handed guy was still serving. The score was still 40-40.

I don’t remember anything else about that match. Fast forward, one month later, I once again saw the same two players playing, this time on a green surface. As my dad also watched with me, I immediately asked him, “Who are these players? What is this”? His reply? “This is Wimbledon. The most important tennis tournament in the world.” He pointed out the right handed player and said, “That is Roger Federer. The best player in the world.”

One year later, the same two players again played on the same green surface. This time, I was a bit older and knew a little bit about tennis. I also knew that the two players were Federer and Nadal. Wimbledon final. 2008. My dad and I sat in front of the TV. Rafa takes the first two sets. Then the weather intervenes and the players are forced off-court. I went to sleep at that time while my dad continued watching. The next morning, I woke up and immediately asked my dad, “Who won?” His reply, “Nadal won. That was the best tennis match I have ever watched.”

Before the 2008 Wimbledon final. Screenshot: Wimbledon YouTube Channel

My memories after that are hazy. I remember seeing Federer win the French Open in 2009 and Wimbledon in 2009. My interest in tennis dwindled in the early-mid 2010s, particularly because different TV channels had rights to different Grand Slams and not all of them were available at home.

I did watch some Wimbledon finals like 2012, 2014, 2015 in those days but nothing much apart from that. In 2017, Federer came back from a six month layoff. I religiously followed the 2017 Australian Open, probably the first Grand Slam event I followed closely in years. I can’t complain about what happened. It was the fuel for my renewed interest in this sport and now I closely follow pretty much every big tournament.

P.S. Even to this day when my mom sees me watching tennis, she invariably mentions, “didn’t Nadal beat Federer that one time?” Of course, Nadal has beaten Federer 24 times. My mom only knows about Wimbledon 2008.

Australian Open Men’s Singles Final: A Personal Reflection

By Nick Carter

On January 29th 2022, it was ten years since one of the best tennis matches I have ever seen. I don’t know if it is the best I have ever seen, that is something I’m still reflecting on. However, it is a match that will always stay with me. On the morning of Sunday January 29th 2012, a 17-year-old British A-Level student woke up, excited to watch the tennis. He’d missed the Djokovic vs Murray epic the morning before due to having a driving lesson, but by and large he’d been catching the main coverage of the tournament on Eurosport UK before revising for his exams. He had very much enjoyed seeing Victoria Azarenka winning her first major the day before. Now it was time for the best two male players in the world to do battle, and he would be watching.

If you hadn’t guessed yet, I was that 17-year-old. What ensued was pure tennis magic for me. I had never seen a contest like this before. Both men were hitting the ball so hard, for so long, and were able to counter each other. Either man could win if a rally became extended. It was a pure, physical battle and I loved it. I didn’t notice how long it lasted, and I didn’t care. I just wanted it to keep going, marvelling that these two were performing so well despite being on court for so long.

At the time, I was a die-hard Federer fan. I still am, but I have learned to respect his rivals a lot more in the last ten years. As a result, I was supporting Djokovic. As far as I was concerned, Nadal was the biggest threat to Federer’s GOAT status so Djokovic was the preferable option. How things have changed since. Nevertheless, when Nadal suddenly won the fourth set (and it seemed sudden to me in that moment), and the fifth looked to be close I cared less. I would still have preferred Djokovic to win, but if Nadal had won that contest, I actually wouldn’t have minded by the end. He would have earned it. Nevertheless, when Djokovic put away that winner from mid-court off a tired Nadal return, I was very pleased. His celebration encapsulated how much of a physical battle this victory was for him.

In the years since, I have always had this match as the standard by which a major final should be measured. I was still a young tennis fan, and I have grown to appreciate finals for what they are. One of my other favourites, Djokovic vs Murray at Wimbledon 2013, was over in straight sets. But still, when I think of major finals, I think of this one. Whenever Djokovic and Nadal meet again, this is the match I think of and see as the template for that contest. This is despite the fact that I don’t think they’ve played such a physical contest since.

I hadn’t rewatched the match in full until now. I’ve rewatched clips, but in the last ten years I have preferred to watch live tennis. I really struggle with being immersed in a contest when I know the outcome. The other issue is that since 2012 I have been to University and I now work a full time 9-5 job, which means I struggle to find the time to watch a 6-hour match. Given the milestone period of ten years though, I felt I had to try. So, here are my thoughts on the match as a tennis fan now, as a 27-year-old who has watched every major held since that match. 

The match is a physical contest, but what made it so long wasn’t the rally length, although it did make a difference. It was the time both players were taking between points. I remember noticing this back in 2012. For me though, this wasn’t irritating, but helped build the tension. No game was an easy hold, you got the sense the momentum could swing at any moment.

For much of the match, the momentum was with Djokovic. Nadal started better, and deserved that first set, but by the end Djokovic was coming back at him. It reminded me a little of how the first set of their Roland Garros semi-final of 2021 played out. The second set in 2012 was more tightly contested, but was the inverse result, with Djokovic deserving the set but Nadal coming back at him only to find something out of nowhere to take it. The other big difference was that both players were more nervous the first set, whilst by this point both were going for it. It was more like the match I remembered, both players counter-punching and neutralising each other.

The third set was the least interesting. It was clear Djokovic was in the ascendency, and although Nadal came out swinging in the fourth there was a sense the Serb would get it done in four. He came close to doing it, only for Nadal to produce clutch, big hitting tennis at 3-4, 0-40 down. The fourth set deserved a tie-break, and Nadal fought his way back into the match. Even back in 2012, I thought this match deserved to go to a fifth, especially once the decider started.

The fifth set is what really sticks in my memory, as somehow these two physically exhausted men (particularly Djokovic) were still able to run so hard and hit so big. This still stuck with me. What interests me watching it back is the amount of unforced errors. I remembered the long, closely contested rallies but what I found was so many of them were ended by one of the players breaking down. They were either forced to by sheer weight of shot or the ball being just that bit out of reach, but still hit 140 unforced errors between them. Given there were 369 points played, that’s 37.9% of the exchanges ending with an unforced error. Whilst most ended with a player actively winning a point, there’s still enough unforced errors to be noticeable. However, it dawned on me that errors require context. A player making errors could be misfiring or overhitting, or it could be because they are being pushed to the limit of what can be achieved with a tennis racquet and ball. I felt that it was the latter in this case. It is small details like this that I picked up on when rewatching, but my overall impression of the match remained much the same. I was perhaps less enthusiastic after, but I was watching more with my head and less with my heart this time.

Djokovic celebrates. Screenshot: Australian Open YouTube Channel

I really enjoyed the rewatch. It was still an epic contest, the big moments still got the same reactions. To me, this is a contest of baseline tennis at its very best, and I love a good rally from the back of the court. What will always stand out to me is the purity of the contest, of both men throwing everything they had at each other. If I’m honest, I can’t think of any match since where I have seen this play out in such an exciting way. I don’t know if I watched it live now whether it would stick with me in the same way as it did when I was 17, but I know a great match when I see one. For me, whilst Federer might be my favourite tennis player, Djokovic vs Nadal is my favourite tennis rivalry.

Why Tennis Needs Silence

By André Rolemberg

Whether you watch it on tv, on live, or at your local club, tennis has a unique quality among sports: it needs silence.

If you play the sport, you also notice it for yourself that any noise can break your flow, disrupt your momentum, make you downright pissed off.

Why?

Every athlete needs focus to perform. Most athletes have the super-human ability to shut off any influence from the outside world, as if nothing else existed but themselves and the game being played. 

Even tennis players have that ability. Novak Djokovic spoke about the ability to cut out the crowd chanting his opponent’s name, and even magically making it sound like they were saying his instead. Djokovic is one of the most focused players ever to walk on a tennis court.

But noise still sucks. Somehow, it still messes everything up. So, if every sport needs a state of absolute focus to be performed at the highest of levels, why do tennis players need complete silence, to the point where it is a requirement if you want to watch a match live?

Here’s a few things I think could explain this rather uncommon need.

Rally structure

First of all, there is the way the rallies happen. In tennis, you are only allowed a single touch at the ball. The touch happens in a split second, meaning you cannot just land the ball on your racket and think about it: it must leave your racket nearly as soon as it touches it. 

This is true for doubles as well. There is no saving grace. You mess up, and that’s it for the point. No one will be there to save it. Unlike in volleyball, a sport with some similarities, where players can produce miraculous defense and turn into attack before it even crosses the net. Or a routine play turned into nightmare if a player fails to do the job right in the first two touches: a third can still keep the point alive.

In tennis, that single touch is what you have. What’s worse: it only guarantees your survival for a little longer.

You can successfully hit the ball back 40 times in a rally. If you miss on the 41st time, you lose the point. Hitting the ball back in is the bare minimum, the prerequisite to playing tennis. Hit the ball out, your efforts are often nil.

Scoring system

The scoring system in tennis is a work of art. It is divided in a few pieces that, grossly putting, are independent of each other.

You need to score sets to win a match. You need to score games to win a set. You need to score points to win a game. You need to keep the ball in play longer than your opponent to win a point.

Conversely, you can hit 50% more balls in than your opponent, and they still finish with more points. You may win more games in a match and your opponent still wins the match. You may win more points then your opponent, and still lose the match. You may do literally everything better than your opponent, albeit just marginally, and still lose the match.

Look at these numbers — brutal. And what is worse, you must win to advance. Tennis really can be an unforgiving sport.

This brings us to pressure points: the ones that close out the clusters of a game, a set, and a match.

When a point is worth more than others, to a point where all your work can turn out completely fruitless, nerves kick in. The absolute need for precision and focus become the ultimate truth. There are no second chances. Or, at least, not after you hit your first serve. 

Players need silence, because one single point gone the wrong way and it cascades down into catastrophe. A lapse in concentration, a shanked forehand, a shaky second serve, and the momentum gets pulled hard towards the other side, as if all your teammates decided to drop the rope at the same time in a game of tug-of-war.

Speed of play

Several sports are quick paced, but there’s something to be said about the incredible speeds at which balls are thrown around on a tennis court. 

Not only does the ball go fast, but also racket heads move at super-human speed to generate the amounts of pace and spin we see coming from players.

With a tiny ball, rackets that have become bigger, but are still somewhat small especially if you consider that only the “sweet spot” is where you want to make contact with the ball, it makes sense to say that any distractions and it’s all over.

As previously stated, you misfire, you lose the point. Even on serve, if you lose your first serve, there goes what is possibly the biggest weapon in the game, and you have to make a choice between going for the second serve and risk losing the point with a double-fault, or playing more conservative and counting on winning the point in a rally which likely will start neutral.

When things happen fast, you have to move fast and think fast. When that happens, you cannot afford to get caught in any sort of distractions. Head in the game, or you’re off-tempo. 

Technique and physics

And just as things happen fast, you must be able to do things fast, but also well. Tennis technique is very precise and also does not allow much room for sloppiness and error.

Moving well means reading the trajectory of the ball, judging the distance from your body to the contact point, placing your legs in the optimal position for optimal balance, swinging with the right distance from the racket head to your body, applying the right amount of spin or “feeling” the right trajectory of a flatter shot or a slice.

All of this happens in a fraction of a second, but obviously no one is truly thinking about these things as a step-by-step guideline when playing. It happens with muscle memory and proprioception, which is basically thinking with your body.

But, just as you can lose your train of thought if someone interrupts you mid-sentence, you can lose your balance and spatial perception if something significantly disturbs the environment you’re in.

Some sports have a higher tolerance to this. Think of soccer, basketball, hockey. They will stop at almost nothing short of a streaker or something that physically interrupts play, like an object thrown on the field/court/ice (and even still, hockey players can even play for a few seconds without a stick that has been broken, and still lies around during play.)

Tennis does not tolerate much at all. Camera flashes, people moving, a whisper too loud between people or from commentators sitting courtside. 

Any small disturbance jeopardizes the outcome of a point. It could be a nuisance at 0–0 in the second game of the first set, on serve. It could be 30-all at 11–11 in the fifth set of a Wimbledon final.

The importance of a crowd

Should crowds just shut up, then?

Absolutely not. Players have *some* tolerance to a little bit of noise, and can play through “ooohh’s” and “ahhh!” sometimes. Murray did that on match point against Djokovic at his second Wimbledon final, and won. Who could blame the British crowd? It was a historical moment. Even I, who’s never been to Great Britain, felt the magic energy.

So crowds have space, and can turn things around. Think of Leylah Annie Fernandez in her US Open matches. Think of the electric atmosphere during Tiafoe-Sinner in Vienna last year (2021). Players can work the crowds. They can draw energy and adrenaline from them.

Crowds matter. 

The point is, you want to be involved in the game, you want to be a part of it. What you don’t want to be is the one who breaks the flow, that swims against the current and consequently ruins everyone’s experience. Making noise at a bad time is like talking on the phone during a movie in the theatre. It doesn’t enhance the experience, it just makes you stick out like a sore thumb, and like such, anyone would want to get rid of the pain as soon as possible.

Make noise between points, scream your favourite player’s name, jump up and down.

But when the umpire says, “quiet, please”, then… Quiet. Please.

Rafael Nadal: Everything Moments

He’s a child but he looks ready to die for this.

His shorts long, his sleeves short, his hair a lengthy untamed mane that tangles across his head and is only held back from cascading his face by a bandana that sits atop his forehead.

He’s ran today with endless youth but by stepping up towards the court now, he stands on the precipice between realities, a border over which there will be no-coming back from if he were to manage to charter his way across it.

The ball is tossed up into a service motion on the baseline opposite, suspended in the air there only momentarily as though it’s aware of the significance of the point it’s about to birth and wants to mark the occasion.

Indeed, this is an everything moment.

The ball is finally struck from its perch high and rifled down fast and at an angle out wide, sending it scarpering desperately to avoid being blocked back.

He moves forwards into the return, his knees bent, his eyes trained, his feet following, pushing, his fingers curled around the racket handle with a grip that would soon cause blisters if he wasn’t careful – he should really consider plasters – and he plants himself steady into a forehand whipped around rotation that has already become something of a signature.

Hours and hours and hours spent, again and again and again, over and over and over. That had been what had got him here. It was a severe dedication to a craft that could guarantee only that his heart would never be far from another breakage. A payoff? Don’t be ridiculous. Do you know how many tennis players never make it? Get lost in the shuffle? Try and fail so immediately that it ends their careers before they’ve even got going?

Tennis owes no one anything, even those who love it.

The ball is manhandled cross-court, a safe shot, just get it back in play, that’s all he needs, just get this point going and don’t miss, good god, please don’t miss, let’s get this done, because on this surface he may look like a whirlwind, but inside he’s scared, he’s damn scared of missing this and crumbling to the dust beneath his feet as it all disappears from him.

His effort lands in easily, thank the heavens above, but a forehand reply is waiting and he needs to be ready so he’s already moving back across the court from his return ready, his mind charting all possibilities in single seconds. Back crosscourt again, down the line, drop shot from nowhere, accidental-mishit-that-somehow-clears-the-net?! It could be any and all but he just needs to be there, just let him be there, let this happen here and now, because this needs to be it, it needs to be.

But wait…

That forehand reply is going… It looks almost, almost, almost… Almost like it’s drifting long, wide, out-of-bounds, whatever it is? Could it, would it, please just let it…

Day-in, sunrise, plans with friends cancelled once more, courts swept, shoulders ache, ball hit and hit and hit, uncle muttering, lines cleaned, headband fixed, sweat drip and drip and drip, sunset, day-out, day-in, sunrise, plans with friends cancelled once more, courts swept, shoulders ache, ball hit and hit and hit, uncle muttering, lines cleaned, headband fixed, sweat drip and drip and drip, sunset, day-out, day-in, sunrise, plans with friends cancelled once more, courts swept, shoulders ache, ball hit and hit and hit, uncle muttering, lines cleaned, headband fixed, sweat drip and drip and drip, sunset, day-out… Childhood.

Please just let this be it.

And it is and his feet go beneath him as he falls back across a history that’s browned through with a reddish tinge and he lets himself really feel this, really claim this as his as he raises his arms from his body towards the sky above as though he’d climb on up there if he could. He closes his eyes to protect this moment, to really imprint it, and the expression on his face is one so purely innocent of anything other than a crazy kid-on-Christmas-morning wonderment. He’ll live this, take this for all of the happiness that it has because there are absolutely no certainties that he’ll ever make it back here again.

So much, so much yet to happen and so much, so much yet to come, this really just the starting gun of a race yet to be run, but if he could pause time at just this singular fraction of a second, just to treasure it and lock it away safe from judgment, he most desperately surely would.

There may indeed be no looking back now but Rafael Nadal’s never been the casting-backward-glances kinda’ kid.

18-years old.

1st major title.

2005 French Open Men’s Champion.

Match point played at 24:45

***

He’s a man and he looks ready to die for this.

His shorts short, his sleeves long, a bandana that sits across his forehead.

He’s ran and ran and ran and ran today with a youth that he no longer honestly has but by stepping up towards the court now, he stands on the precipice between realities, a border over which there will be no-coming back from if he were to manage to charter his way across it.

He readies himself on his baseline, his usual routine of fixing his hair that has long since thinned, falling under the intense pressure of exerting himself to his limits far too many times to count, stresses and wrinkles across his face a modern art exhibition demonstrating what happens to a person who just won’t stop even when everyone in the world tells them to.

He tosses the ball into the air above his head and he lets it remain up there for just a moment, lets it hover there unaware of the significance of the point it’s about to play a leading role in.

Indeed, this is an everything moment.

He finally strikes it from its perch high and rifles it down fast and at an angle down the middle, sending it scarpering desperately to try and force an error.

He stays where he’s at, his knees bent, his eyes trained, his feet following, pushing, his fingers curled around the racket handle with a grip that’s caused blisters so many that he wears plasters around each of them, war-wounds and battle scars, and he plants himself ready for response.

Hours and hours and hours spent, again and again and again, over and over and over. That had been what had helped him return to this stage. It was a severe dedication to a craft that could guarantee only that his heart would never be far from another breakage. A payoff? Don’t be ridiculous. Do you know how many tennis players suffer? Get lost in injuries? Try for a comeback but are damaged so greatly that it ends their careers before they’re ready for goodbye?

Tennis owes no one anything, even those who love it.

The ball is coming back to him into the mid-court and he’s ready with his forehand to whip around his head in a rotation that has long become his signature shot, ready to play it inside out aggressively but good god, please don’t let him miss, let’s get this done, because he may now look close to the finishing line but inside, he’s scared, he’s damn scared of missing this and crumbling to the concrete beneath his feet as it all disappears from him.

His shot lands in easily, thank the heavens above, but a defensive forehand reply is waiting and he needs to be ready so he’s already moving forwards into the net, his mind charting all possibilities in single seconds. Lob, down-the-line, drop-shot-from-nowhere, accidental-mishit-that-somehow-clears-the-net?! It could be any and all but he just needs to be there, just let him be there, let this happen here and now, because this needs to be it, it needs to be because he’s exhausted.

Still not over…

One more shot to hit, a volleyed backhand directly down into the open court and surely that’s not coming back, surely after five hours that’s not coming back, surely after all of this nonsense that’s not coming back…

Day-in. Sunrise. Plans with friends and family cancelled once more. Courts swept. Shoulders ache and wrists break. Ball hit and hit and hit. Surgery tables. Needled injection. Pain and suffering. Wins and losses. Lines cleaned. Headband fixed. Sweat drips and drips and drips. Muscle tears. Tears cried. Sunset. Day-out. Day-in. Sunrise. Plans with friends and family cancelled once more. Courts swept. Shoulders ache and wrists break. Ball hit and hit and hit. Surgery tables. Needled injection. Pain and suffering. Wins and losses. Lines cleaned. Headband fixed. Sweat drips and drips and drips. Muscle tears. Tears cried. Sunset. Day-out. Day-in. Sunrise. Plans with friends and family cancelled once more. Courts swept. Shoulders ache and wrists break. Ball hit and hit and hit. Surgery tables. Needled injection. Pain and suffering. Wins and losses. Lines cleaned. Headband fixed. Sweat drips and drips and drips. Muscle tears. Tears cried. Sunset. Day-out… Professional player.

Please just let this be it…

And it is and his feet hold him steady across a history that’s browned through with a reddish tinge but now bizarrely blue with a hint of hard and he lets himself really feel this, really claim this as his as he raises his hands towards to his face and grins a smile that looks like it’ll never leave him, up towards his team as though he’d climb on up there right now to be with them if he could. For now though, he handshakes at the net and takes the applause with a celebration of the like many thought had long since gone, fist-pumping the air and falling to his knees, closing his eyes to protect this moment, to really imprint it, and the expression on his face is one so purely innocent of anything other than a crazy kid-on-Christmas-morning wonderment. He’ll live this, take this for all of the happiness that it has because there are absolutely no certainties that he’ll ever make it back here again.

So much, so much has happened and not all too much left to accomplish, an echoing memory of the starting gun of a race-turned-marathon-turned-endurance-test that is even now still being run, but if he could pause time at just this singular fraction of a second as he sat on top of the world, just to treasure it and lock it away safe from judgment, he most desperately surely would.

Perhaps he’ll spare a moment now to comprehend how far he’s come and through what he’s been to make it here. Just for this, perhaps Rafael Nadal will allow himself to be a casting-backwards-glances kinda’ guy.

35-years old.

21st major title.

2022 Australian Open Men’s Champion.

The 1st and the 21st: Rafael Nadal winning the French Open 2005 and the Australian Open 2022

Second to None

“Bad as you might be feeling now, it’s likely that you’ll never have as good a chance of winning the Australian Open as you do today.”

Toni Nadal to his nephew before the 2009 Australian Open final, Rafa

To fight, at its core, is to suffer. Often fruitlessly. It’s one of the easiest ways to get back into a tennis match in that wanting to win requires no technical skill, but it often does demand intense pain. Rafael Nadal knows this better than anyone. He has extended many matches by multiple hours only to lose them anyway. He has pulled off incredible escapes. But when Nadal blew a 5-3 lead in the second set tiebreak against Daniil Medvedev to go down two sets in the Australian Open final, it seemed that all the fight in the world wouldn’t have helped him. He was two hours into a physical match against a much younger opponent who was more in-form on hard court, to boot.

How do you explain the result we ended up getting, a backbreaking 2-6, 6-7 (5), 6-4, 6-4, 7-5 victory for Rafa? He is 35. At a gargantuan five hours and 24 minutes, this was the second-longest match of his professional career (and Nadal has played some marathons). It’s the longest match he’s ever played and ended up winning. Think about that — Nadal has been serving bigger and trying to end points more quickly in this phase of his career, yet he not only waded into the lava for a war of attrition, he came out on top. He wasn’t supposed to be able to do this anymore; he was getting tired after two quick sets against Matteo Berrettini! Yet in one of the bigger matches of his life, Nadal outlasted a younger, fitter opponent.

The absurdity doesn’t stop there. Nadal had not come back from two sets to love down since Wimbledon in 2007 — that’s almost fifteen years ago. Nadal fights like no one else, yes, but that spirit has tended to result more in epic, unique losses than comeback victories. He makes matches more thrilling, more close than you could ever expect, but he rarely actually wins them from a big deficit. Today, he pulled off a comeback from 2-6, 6-7 (5), 2-3, love-40 against the world number two and reigning U.S. Open champion. Good luck explaining that one to the grandkids. Or tennis analysts.

All in all, Toni turned out to be right. After winning that maiden title in 2009, Nadal fell short in his next four appearances in Australian Open finals. His win over Roger Federer thirteen years ago was a spectacle of shotmaking and incredible court coverage, of mental strength and endurance. And yet, I think today’s title was more improbable.

*****

Nadal’s run to the final had been odd. He played some great tennis, but his opponents never exactly rose to the occasion. Besides a lone break point (saved by an ace) early in the fifth set of his quarterfinal against Shapovalov, Nadal was never behind in a match. He was a relatively heavy underdog entering the final. I was excited to see Nadal get pushed into a corner, since that was what had been missing for me this tournament — the Spaniard had fired his trademark forehands, but hadn’t faced a meaningful enough deficit to have to fight very hard.

The tournament had already been a success for Nadal, but a final is a final, and no finals had been more hostile to him than Australian Open title matches. It didn’t take long for him to start facing the adversity I hoped his opponents would show him. Nadal lost the first set, and lost it in a way that made it seem like a Medvedev win was inevitable. Nadal fought for tough holds in his first two service games, but Medvedev then broke him at love twice in a row. The Russian was making almost all of his returns, running down Nadal’s forehands, and serving bombs. The Spaniard’s slices, once a useful change of pace in baseline rallies against Medvedev, were totally ineffective. That Nadal had ever been able to beat Medvedev felt like an alternate-universe memory.

When Nadal lost the second set despite having a handful of golden opportunities to win it — he had a 4-1 lead in the set, had set point on serve at 5-3, led the tiebreak 5-3, and generally failed to capitalize on Medvedev losing his first serve — the match really felt over. He had reversed some of the overwhelming momentum against him in the first set, but had blown a bunch of chances to even the match, which had now been going on for a physical two hours.

The narrative going into the match was that Nadal would have to win in three or four. He had been visibly tired in several of his matches. Medvedev, meanwhile, played for nearly five hours against Felix Auger-Aliassime in the quarterfinals and rebounded easily to tire out Stefanos Tsitsipas in the semis. Medvedev looked indefatigable. It seemed impossible that Nadal could play his game and win, all the more so from two sets down.

It was a given that the Spaniard would go down swinging, no matter the odds, but the defiance is always impressive. As Nadal vamos-ed his way through a few tough holds in the third set, I was shaking my head in admiration. He was screwed, clearly, but his play-every-point-like-it’s-your-last mentality was allowing him to stay in the moment and not lose hope by looking at the bigger picture. He broke Medvedev at 4-all with a stunning backhand pass and served the set out with four straight winners, celebrating with a prolonged roar at the crowd.

Nadal’s tactical acumen is sometimes buried underneath his spirit. The way the Spaniard played in the fourth set was practically incomparable to the first. Nadal ripped backhand winners down the line, methodically took out Medvedev’s legs with drop shots, and launched sustained rampages with his forehand. Nadal is resilient because of his competitive drive, yes, but his tactical mobility is also a big weapon. In the Roland-Garros semifinal last year, Djokovic was taking over the match with angled crosscourt forehands. In the third set, he won 16 of 17 points in which he was able to pull Nadal outside the doubles alley. Twice down a break in the set, Nadal changed his patterns to deny Djokovic the opportunity to hit that shot as much towards the end of the set, and wound up with a set point at 6-5 in a frame he had trailed in constantly. In this match, Nadal’s backhand down the line — a shot he typically hits centrally to provoke his opponents into hitting crosscourt to his forehand — may have been the shot of the match. He sprayed several clean winners into the corner. It’s not something he’s always comfortable doing, but he did it, and it worked. Nadal’s combination of will and willingness to change is a deadly one.

By the fifth set, Medvedev looked dead on his feet. He served well through much of the set, but early on, when rallies got going, he was almost immediately toast. At 2-all, 30-15, he hit a backhand into Nadal’s forehand that was reminiscent of something I (or Berrettini) would produce from that wing. Nadal annihilated it for a winner. The inevitable tension of a looming title at a stage so important to him complicated the set greatly, but Nadal was easily the better player. He probably should have won the fifth 6-2 or 6-3 instead of 7-5.

By far the most shocking part of this match, for me, was that Nadal seemed not to have a single physical dip in the last three sets. By all reasonable guesses, he would have been gassed to start the third set. Yet he dropped serve just twice in the final three sets. He cut low backhand slices crosscourt to stay in points that barely cleared the net, keeping him alive. As Medvedev got his quads massaged on changeovers, Nadal appeared to feel fine. A common joke regarding Nadal’s notoriously bad Australian Open luck in years past was that he had to make a deal with the devil to give him the extraordinary fitness required to win the title in 2009. Today, it was as if the devil allowed Nadal the use of his young legs one last time.

“He was, I think, stronger than me physically today.”

-Daniil Medvedev on Nadal after the match

*****

The last few years of the Big Three era have been fascinating to watch not just for the incredible standard of tennis, but for the new ways to mirror each other Djokovic and Nadal come up with. Last year, Djokovic took out Rafa at Roland-Garros in a draining semifinal. I didn’t think he had it in him after seven losses to the Spaniard on the Parisian dirt. When Djokovic should have had nothing left, he came back from two sets down against Tsitsipas in the final. Nadal entered this Australian Open without ideal preparation and a difficult draw in front of him. Though his expected quarterfinal opponent failed to materialize, Nadal beat three top-15 players. He was supposed to be physically lacking and played a match longer than any he had won before, and ended up bagging it. The greats continue to evolve, to improve, to win in new ways. The next chapter of the Djokovic-Nadal rivalry and GOAT race looks enticing in light of Nadal’s unexpected durability this tournament. If they’ve both won majors on unfavorable surfaces after beating top contenders in the last year, how long can they continue to dominate their home turf? Now that the finish line of 20 has been moved, how far will they push it? I can’t wait for them to duel for Roland-Garros.

*****

What will stick with me from this match is the mere fact that Nadal won it. At the start of the fifth set, I expected Medvedev to regroup and win. When Medvedev broke Nadal after being down 30-love to stay in the match, I thought he would run away with the momentum. This is the kind of match Nadal loses at the Australian Open! He comes back from a deficit, plays blinding tennis, then either falters at an inopportune moment or has the misfortune to watch his opponent play just a little bit better. It happened at the 2012 and 2017 Australian Open finals (down two sets to one, won the fourth, was up a break in the fifth, lost the match). When Nadal served for the final at 5-4 in the fifth and went up 30-love, he looked home free. Then he made a handful of unforced errors, including a double fault, and he looked primed for his most harrowing loss yet: he had levitated out of the jaws of defeat only to slip and fall as he went to climb to safe ground.

Left: Nadal after losing the 2012 Australian Open final. Right: Nadal after winning a similarly draining match in the 2022 final.

Even when Nadal had leads in the fifth set, there were times when I thought Medvedev would win. At 3-2, 40-15, Nadal had a forehand putaway, guessed the wrong side, and got dragged into a multi-deuce game in which he had to save three break points (all with unreturned sliders out wide, interestingly).

Nadal managed to avoid this fate. With Medvedev serving at 5-5, 30-15, he ran down a drop shot and passed the Russian with a crosscourt dink that barely snuck over the net. Had he lost that point, Medvedev probably would have held for 6-5, leaving Nadal’s chances in the mud. (Had Rafa held serve to survive, he’d have had to play a match tiebreak. He hasn’t won a tiebreak against a top ten player for over two years.) He didn’t avoid another hellish loss by much, but he did do it.

*****

Before this tournament, I posited that for Nadal, the joy of tennis is in the fight, not the results. That in a way, he’s okay with losing if he gets to engage in an almighty struggle. I wondered if that was the case for this match, though. Yes, much of the last four sets were fiercely competitive, just the kind of war Nadal has built a career by waging, but I think this one was different. After Nadal placed his final volley out of Medvedev’s reach but far enough inside the lines there was no way he could miss it, he dropped his racket and covered his face with his hands. He beamed, and then he shook his head.

Disbelief. Screenshot: Australian Open YouTube Channel

Nadal has now won 21 majors, and he has celebrated 17 of them by falling to the ground in elation. Three of the times he didn’t were after straight-set drubbings of finals. Then there was this one. When Nadal falls to the ground, it strikes me as a brief afterlife to the intense spirit of a major final, the competitiveness requiring a couple seconds to exit his body. After this match, though, it left immediately (perhaps because Nadal had no remaining energy to keep it contained), leaving only joy and disbelief. I think he wanted to win another Australian Open, wanted it more than he’s wanted most anything else, even an intense battle. And he got it.

I wrote that in fighting hard and still losing, Nadal extracts a level of play from his opponent that transcends the sport and the result. The cruel paradox is that the pure theater comes at a price of brutal losses for the fighter; his pain is quite literally our gain. Today, for the first time in an Australian Open final since 2009, his opponent folded in the face of his spirit. Not completely — Medvedev made an impressive recovery after going down 3-2 in the fifth, his shots recovering some zip and length — but Nadal was rarely under scoreboard pressure in the fifth set. He broke down his opponent enough to put the match on his racket by the end, and when trying to serve it out for a second time, he did not miss.

*****

When Nadal’s contests take on a special kind of intensity, you can sometimes sense the spiritual weariness in his reactions. He still snarls, but his face becomes tinged with fatigue, or even fear. Nadal served for the match a second time and went up 30-love again. To lose the next point would have meant an instant flashback to getting broken two games earlier; to win the next point meant certain victory at 40-love. Nadal smashed an untouched serve out wide. The let radar beeped, but it went unnoticed all around (not a small detail!), scoring the serve as an ace. Nadal pumped his fist, but gently. He had a soft grimace on his face. The defiance was still there, as always, but it was like he was thinking oh, thank god, I can rest soon. The euphoric disbelief came one point later.

Can there be a better advertisement for never giving up in sport than the way Rafael Nadal won this match? There will be obstacles. Adversaries will perform well. You will hurt. You will suffer. Things will look bleak. But if you stick around, really stick around, good things will happen.

In the epic novel of the Big Three, Nadal has so often been second. He was #2 behind Federer for four years, then trailed Djokovic for much of the next decade. Nadal has been the chaser, the rival. He has amazed in his defeats and won many compelling matches as #2 in the world, but he has been second nonetheless. He might still be second when Djokovic takes the court again, who may well be hungrier than ever. But this is Rafa’s moment. He’s won 21 major titles. One more than Djokovic, one more than Federer. He has suffered for so many years in trying to fight past his rivals, his injuries, and himself at times. Nadal has overcome it all. He has been second for so long, and after yet another almighty effort, he is now first.