Nadal crushes del Potro
Top seed rolls into 11th Roland Garros final, will face Austrian Thiem for title
PARIS >> In addition to his physicality, his stamina, his will, his rocketed shots, his left-handedness, his diabolical spin and his rare capacity to take a mid-rally predicament and reverse it into some kind of optical illusion of a winner, Rafael Nadal has this curious knack that continues to wreak a living hell for opponents even 14 French Opens into his career: his humility.
Perhaps no major athlete has plied such a genuine humility to such hegemonic ends. “I have never been arrogant,” he said in Spanish late Friday, and as that has proved true throughout his long stay on a world stage, it also has lent fuel to some outrageous facts.
One fact: He reached his record 11th French Open final Friday when he clambered out of six break-point thickets in the first set and destroyed the player soon to be ranked No. 4 in the world, Juan Martin del Potro, by 6-4, 6-1, 6-2.
Another fact: He’s 10-0 in those first 10 finals.
Another: It’s such a thick collection of finals that he has beaten one Argentine, one Swiss four times, one Swede, one Serbian twice, one fellow Spaniard and a second Swiss, so he
might as well go ahead and beat an Austrian, who would be No. 8-ranked Dominic Thiem, whose rise through his early 20s found a benchmark Friday when he banged and wrestled through Italy’s Marco Cecchinato, 7-5, 7-6 (12-10), 6-1, to find his first Grand Slam final.
Nadal is 85-2 here. Everybody, including Thiem on Friday, chatters about what dreadful chore it must be to beat him in best-of-five. Almost nobody knows. Only two of his 87 matches here have even gone to five sets. Sixty-six wins have ended in three. Nadal has remained relatively unimpressed.
“Today is a day to rejoice,” the topseeded player said Friday of doing something for the 11th time. “When you’re in a final like Roland Garros, it’s a great happiness. Being in a final here is something I should rejoice about and be happy about. It may sound easy and logical, but I don’t want it to be. It’s not a routine. I don’t want anyone to think that it’s a routine.
“I don’t want to sound arrogant. I have never been arrogant. So what I simply mean is that even though you have to remain humble, you have to give the value to whatever you’re doing. It would be even more arrogant to think that all this is normal.
“I love what I am doing,” Nadal said. “I love the competition. I love the sport. I can’t say another thing. Because if it’s not that way, it’s sure that I will not be here after I-don’t-know-how-many years of career that I already had. A lot of years of playing and doing the same things every year. But the only way to keep doing this and going on court every morning with the motivation to improve something, because you feel the game, no? You feel the sport and you appreciate.”
Here’s 2018, a futuristic time when Nadal began, and here’s del Potro making observations of Nadal such as, “Intensity is too high the whole match,” and, “He looks fresh,” and — good grief — “He’s improving his backhand a lot.”
Must everyone wait for Nadal’s retirement for this humble rule to end?
“Maybe,” del Potro said.