In a year punctuated by more upsets than a toddler’s tea party, Rafael Nadal’s US Open defeat to Fabio Fognini marked a series of new lows. He lost a five-set match after leading by two sets to love, an unprecedented indignity for a man whose mastery over the long haul has brought him 14 grand slam titles. He lost his final chance to extend a remarkable record of winning at least one major every year for a decade, a feat unmatched by any other player in the sport’s history. He lost in the third round of the US Open for the first time since 2005. And, for the third time in eight months, the Spaniard lost to Fabio Fognini, a gifted but temperamentally flawed player against whom he had an unblemished record before this year.
Yet if the statistics point to a story of steady decline, Rafa tells a different tale. “What I am doing worse is playing worse than what I used to do the last couple of years. That’s it,” he said after his 3-6, 4-6, 6-4, 6-3, 6-4 loss. “We can be talking for one hour trying to create a reason. But the sport for me is simple, no? If you are playing with less confidence and you are hitting balls without creating the damage on the opponent that I believe I should do, then they have the possibility to attack.”
Where his critics discern atrophy, Nadal sees improvement. His consistency is returning, he insists, and he now needs to show greater resilience in his defensive play and attack with more venom. “I am playing with less mistakes than before” he said. “I have better feelings on the ball. Now it remains to have again the speed, that extra speed on the ball, on the winner. I want to defend a little bit longer, and hit easier winners … small things make a big difference.”
As for the difficulty or otherwise of coming to terms with his third defeat in four meetings with Fognini this year – his sole victory over the Italian came in the final of the Hamburg Open a month ago – the Spaniard was adamant: “This is another loss, not tougher … my mind allows me to fight until the end. This is something that I was missing for a while, that feeling that I am there. The nerves, the anxiety that I had for a long time this season, [meant] I was not able to do it – I was not able to be fighting the way that I was fighting today. So this is an improvement for me.”
But is it? Negative scrutiny of Nadal’s annus horribilis is inevitable for a player of his stature and achievements. He was right, though, when he suggested after his second-round win over Argentina’s Diego Schwartzman that some of the criticism has become unbalanced. In recent months his footwork and movement have looked better, and while that famous whip-crack of a forehand is still producing some inexplicable errors at key moments, he is finding better length and penetration than he was a few months ago. Nadal also appears physically stronger. As Martina Navratilova pointed out during Wimbledon, he had started to look almost too lean; now his upper body has recovered something of its former muscularity.
What the Nadal of 2015 has lost, however, is the invincible aura of old. He has been a gladiatorial presence over the years, an indefatigable force of nature who would face down his opponents like a prizefighter and go after them with bristling, relentless pugnacity. Many players were beaten before they even left the locker room. Against Fognini, the change in that dynamic was palpable. As Nadal went through his customary round of bouncing and bunny hops during the pre-match coin toss, the Italian casually twiddled his racket; he could hardly have looked more relaxed had he been sipping a limoncello by the Italian riviera in his native Sanremo.
The manner of Nadal’s latest setback will only offer further encouragement to his rivals. Taming Rafa over the course of five sets has long been regarded as a sporting Everest. The idea that he could relinquish a two-set lead to a man who had previously failed to beat a top-10 player on hard courts in 17 attempts was unthinkable, even to Fognini. “Two sets to zero against Rafa, maybe you have to go to Lourdes,” quipped Fognini. “I went there.”
In truth, the Italian’s victory owed less to divine intervention than the inspired shot-making that produced a total of 70 winners across the three hours and 46 minutes the contest spanned. That in itself tells a story. Not so long ago, those winners might have flowed from the racket of Nadal. Instead, at the conclusion of an extraordinary fifth set that featured seven consecutive breaks of serve, he sprayed a backhand desperately wide.
From his vantage point in the Spaniard’s court-side box, Tiger Woods – himself no stranger to wayward strokes these days – must have winced. Nadal will know better than anyone that he must not allow talk of progress and improvement to acquire the edge of self-deception with which the rhetoric of his fellow 14-times major winner has become tinged.
