After upset, Nadal promises to tweak game
This isn’t the end of Rafael Nadal. Not by a long shot.
But the 14-time major champion, 30, has to change something in his game or his approach to the sport if he wants to win Grand Slam tournament title No. 15 and beyond. And he knows it.
“I don’t start from zero. That’s a positive thing,” an emotional Nadal told reporters Sunday night after his loss to world No. 25 Lucas Pouille in the fourth round of the U.S. Open. “I have the motivation to keep working.”
Work is something Nadal has never been adverse to.
He ends the 2016 Grand Slam calendar without winning a major for the second consecutive year after winning one every season for 10 in a row from 2005 to 2014.
This year, in fact, Nadal didn’t reach the quarterfinals in any of the three majors he played, a first since 2004. A wrist injury interrupted his French Open, and then he missed Wimbledon because of the same injury and was a last-minute inclusion for the Olympics, where he won the doubles gold medal and placed fourth in singles.
Is the pressure of the major tournaments — tennis’ most coveted — feeling heavier on his veteran shoulders?
“I’m 30 years old. After having the career that I have, it is not a question of pressure,” he answered forcefully.
But there are chinks in his armor: His serve abandons him more often these days as it did against Pouille. His once-booming lefty forehand isn’t as lethal. His shots — especially in the key moments — find the service line area of the court instead of the baseline. He looks more concerned than ferocious. None of this deters Nadal. “Losing in the fourth round after having a big chance to play a great event here, feeling myself ready for it, for sure I am not very satisfied, no? I am sad,” Nadal said. “But that’s it. I give it my best. I try my best. I fight until the last ball. ...
“I need to improve in other things, but I am going to do it.”
Now is a time in tennis when the shift feels the most real: Nadal and Roger Federer, once the two most-feared titans in the game, are the third and fourth wheels to Novak Djokovic’s and Andy Murray’s domination.
Nadal keeps things close-knit, however, with his uncle, Toni Nadal, as his coach — the position he’s held for Nadal’s entire career — and a Mallorca-based team he has trusted for years.
Their mantra: work hard and nothing more. Nadal still believes that. “We have always had injuries, but it is no problem,” Toni Nadal said in an interview last week. “It’s not a big problem. For him, it is not hard work. The work is in the head. We are prepared to work hard and make good things again.”
“I think he has an excellent team around him,” said Leif Shiras, a former player and current TV commentator. “They are always on top of this stuff. He has such an incredible foundation of work. He’s done everything you need to do to be able to recover.”
“You can see it or you can write the way that you want,” Rafael Nadal told reporters, looking out to the room. “I know what’s going on. I know what I have to do. It is just a couple of things that for some reasons didn’t happen, and you need to be ready to ... be (selfcritical). It is something that I believe (is) really going to change.”
That change will happen and Nadal likely will win a Grand Slam again. Or Grand Slams. Either way, we’ve yet to hear his final “vamos!”