Tennis matador truly special
Coffey: US Open title showcases true Nadal
FLUSHING MEADOWS, N.Y. – Near the end of five of the greatest hours the U.S. Open has ever had Sunday night, the crowd in Arthur Ashe Stadium was so loud you would’ve thought it was a bullfight. Almost 24,000 people chanted “Rafa, Rafa,” and the building felt as if it were quaking, and it wasn’t just because 33-year-old Rafael Nadal had won his fourth U.S. Open and his 19th Grand Slam tournament title, drawing within one of Roger Federer.
It was the way the 341 points in this 7-5, 6-3, 5-7, 4-6, 6-4 men’s final played out. It was the way Nadal’s spectacular opponent, Daniil Medvedev, came back from two sets and a break down, when he sure looked as if he was about to get on the next plane back to Moscow. Even he thought so.
“(I was thinking), ‘OK, in 20 minutes I have to give a speech. What do I say?’ ” Medvedev said.
Maybe most of all, it was the way Nadal plays and comports himself, and the way he has match after match, year after year, even after almost two decades.
Nadal never stops fighting and never seems to fail to say and do the right thing. He never gives his opponents anything but massive respect, nor does he think being one of the greatest athletes of his time in any sport gives him the license to strut. When his semifinal opponent, Matteo Berrettini, called him the greatest fighter in the history of tennis and he was asked about it, Nadal said, “I don’t like to talk much about myself, because it’s not a beautiful thing.”
Nadal is a bundle of fast-twitch compulsions. He is also compulsively watchable, because he plays every point as if he might never get to hold a tennis racket again. It is almost comical the way he keeps to his routine, especially when he serves, from the tucking of his hair behind his ear to the picking at the seat of his shorts to the bounce-bouncebounce of the ball, leaving him ever in danger of a time violation (which he got three of Sunday night.)
All of this might get old if Nadal didn’t have this gift of pouring every fiber of his being into every point. His whole universe revolves around the next point, and the passion and commitment he has to the moment is almost palpable, even when things are going all wrong.
On Saturday night, Bianca Andreescu of Canada showed staggering courage and self-belief in her shocking victory over a 23-time champion, Serena Williams, in her major final debut. The 23-year-old Medvedev, a breakout star in men’s tennis, showed nothing less in his own major final debut Sunday night. You never know how athletes are going to respond in their first turn in the white-hot glare of a championship event. Medvedev, like Andreescu, was just fine with it.
For a man who had never won a fiveset match in his life, you never would’ve known it. He broke Nadal twice in the third, and when he finished that set off, he did it again, in the fourth, hammering a backhand return winner down the line on set point to square the match at two sets.
Throughout the fortnight, Nadal had never been in any sort of trouble. Now he was in trouble. Medvedev suddenly was serving and volleying, dictating play and outhitting Nadal from the baseline.
“The nerves were so high,” Nadal said.
Then Medvedev had a break point in the second game of the fifth, and when chair umpire Ali Nili took a first serve away from Nadal for a time violation, the crowd jeered and Nadal went to the service line, tucked, picked and bounced, and then won the point and held serve.
He pumped his fist and the bullfight noise rocked the place. He went up a break, then another, for 5-2, and served for the match twice.
Medevev broke back and held for 5-4 and had a break point to get to 5-5 at 3040 in the 10th game. Now the crowd chanted his name, too.
Medvedev was completely heroic, and Nadal was Nadal, finding a way to reset, to win a point when everything is running away from him. He smashed a deep forehand that forced a long Medvedev lob.
A few points later, Medvedev knocked a forehand return long on championship point, and Nadal splayed out on the court, flat on his back. Soon they were showing a video retrospective of all his titles, and tears came hard.
“Daniil created this moment, too,” Nadal said. “The way that he fighted, the way that he played, is a champion way. Just well done for him. I really believe that he will have many more chances.”
On the night he closed within one major title of Federer, Nadal naturally was asked about becoming the sport’s all-time winner. He said the right thing, and the true thing. He always does.
“I would love to be the one who win more, but I am not thinking and I not going to practice every day or not playing tennis for it.
“I am playing tennis because I love to play tennis. I play to be happy.”