Eyeing a Wimbledon high again
It is the time for a familiar summer switch for Rafael Nadal. Each June, he trades clay-court coronations for grass-court consternation.
Two weeks ago, Nadal won his 10th French Open title, further cementing his standing as the best clay court player in the history of men’s tennis. Now he must move to less certain footing as the tour shifts to grass, where early career triumphs have given way to challenges.
After a week of rest, Nadal commuted from the east side of his home island to the west, to the site of the Mallorca Open, a women’s grass-court event, where he practiced in the mornings before the heat and the tournament took over. “I still have work to do,” Nadal said at the tournament last week. “The level I’m at now is not enough to compete like I want at Wimbledon.”
After an injury-plagued 2016, Nadal, 31, has recaptured the spark of a few years ago. His victory at Roland Garros was his first major tournament win since the 2014 French Open, and it was perhaps the best performance of his 10 titles there. He did not drop a set and lost only 35 games.
In recent years, however, his fortunes have quickly shifted with the change in surfaces.
At the outset of his career, major successes came more quickly for Nadal on grass than on the hard courts. Before he reached a final at the Australian Open or the US Open, he had already made it to three consecutive finals at Wimbledon. He fell to Roger Federer in 2006 and 2007 before beating him in 2008.
After being unable to defend his title in 2009 because of knee problems, Nadal returned to win his second title there in 2010 and reached another final in 2011.
But after that run of five finals in six years, Nadal’s acuity on grass was abruptly uprooted. In 2012, he suffered a shocking loss to No 100 Lukas Rosol in the second round at Wimbledon. The contentious five-setter ended with Rosol firing aces seemingly at will, a performance that could have been dismissed as an example of a lesser player’s being locked in against a superior foe.
Rather than an outlier, however, that match was an omen. What followed for Nadal was an improbable spell of Wimbledon defeats to players with triple-digit rankings. While he was struggling on grass, he flourished on other surfaces.
HINT OF REVERSAL
Then there was a hint of another reversal in 2015, a quarterfinal loss at Roland Garros followed by a title in Stuttgart, Germany, which was Nadal’s first on grass in five years. Two weeks later at Wimbledon, he was handed an early defeat, by No. 102 Dustin Brown in the second round.
Because of a wrist injury that curtailed his French Open and limited his subsequent tournament appearances last year — and fatigue from match load this year that forced him out of the Queen’s Club event last week — Nadal had not played a match on grass since. He will enter Wimbledon next week without having played a competitive match on the surface in two years.
For Nadal and his coach and uncle, Toni Nadal, the explanation for the dip in his performance on grass is simple: difficulty bending his knees enough for him to hit the surface’s low-bouncing balls with the force he once did.