TENNIS US OPEN:RAFAEL NADAL, articulate even in halting English but most perfectly in tennis, identified the core ingredient that made his New York night of magic with Novak Djokovic so memorable: "One more ball."
It is that gift consistently to conjure the impossible, to extend the moment of combat, that separates Nadal, Djokovic and Roger Federer from every other player in tennis and explains in three words how Djokovic ripped Nadal’s US Open title from him in four extraordinary sets at Flushing Meadows on Monday evening, to add to the Wimbledon win against him that took the Serb to number one in the world.
Djokovic’s lead over Nadal in the rankings is now 4,310 points. Maybe Superman could catch him.
“His level, for sure, is fantastic,” Nadal said after recovering from the four hours and 10 minutes this special final lasted. “He’s doing very well mentally, everything. So just accept that. Accept the challenge and work. He’s enough confidence in every moment to keep believing in one more ball, one more ball.”
The mantra of sweat and work is the counterpoint to the splendour of their performance, which we take for granted because they do these things on such a regular basis, especially when it matters. The Djokovic and Nadal we saw at the Arthur Ashe stadium in no way resemble the players who were striving against mortals on their journeys to the final.
Without the effort in the weeks and months leading up to these sublime collisions of excellence, however, we might not have witnessed the 31-shot rally at the heart of the third game of the second set, a game that lasted nearly 18 minutes.
Nor might we have seen the fifth game of the third set, in which Nadal’s tired volley out of bounds was a cruel sign-off to an exchange of mind-boggling virtuosity stretched over 27 shots, most of which deserved to be winners in their own right.
And we would have been robbed of the spectacle of their embrace at the end, respect of such genuine mutuality the scoreline seemed irrelevant to everyone but the victor.
The records will show that Djokovic won his fourth grand slam title 6-2, 6-4, 6-7, 6-1. The statistics will say Djokovic came to the net 47 times, 30 more than Nadal. They will tell us the winner took advantage of 11 of the 26 break-point opportunities presented to him, while Nadal broke him six times from 14 chances.
They will also tell a lie: that Djokovic hit 51 unforced errors and Nadal 37. There was hardly an error in this contest that was unforced. So fierce was the hitting, so accurate was the placement, so vicious was the spin that they had barely a sniff of an easy shot. Those handful of under-hit or erroneously placed strokes that ended up in the net or down the tramlines were the price we paid for the quality elsewhere.
John McEnroe was in no doubt about the pitch this final reached, nor where the winner stands in the game’s tradition.
“Djokovic is having the greatest year in the history of our sport, there’s no doubt about it,” he said after the dust had settled.
“He bewildered Nadal. I’ve never seen Nadal look as if he doesn’t know what to do – and even on clay in Rome, Djokovic made him look like that.
“Wimbledon was where he separated himself and took himself to a whole new level. He beat Nadal six times in one year and, considering the year Nadal had in 2010, that’s pretty hard to do.”
As ever McEnroe has identified the significance of the match and of their rivalry. A year ago informed observers were talking about the “Rafa Slam”. The Spaniard was as near to unbeatable as it is possible to get in tennis, just as Federer had been before him in 2005 and 2006, when he won 173 singles matches, losing nine.
A year on and Djokovic is looking as invincible as Nadal did then. Whether he can sustain this aura for much longer we will learn soon enough. The bones and sinews of the champion are aching, stretched to their limit.
Two weeks ago, when it was put to him that he had been using a revolutionary recovery chamber at the tennis complex of a friend in New Jersey, the Serb shuffled and shook his head. He had no need for that any more, he said. He has good cause to return to the “Magic Egg” to ease the hurt in his back and his hip that nearly felled him towards the end of the final. He has a right shoulder, too, that fell apart against Andy Murray in Cincinnati a few weeks ago. That is the price he pays for greatness.
Guardian Service
