The best tennis players, even competing on their favorite surface, usually have at least one humiliation they would rather forget.
For eight-time Wimbledon champion Roger Federer, it was a SW19 second-round loss to then-world number 116 Sergiy Stakhovsky in 2013. Eleven years earlier, seven-time champion Pete Sampras of Wimbledon, had been eliminated at the same stage by a lucky player. the loser George Bastl, world number 145. Novak Djokovic’s worst moment also came during his best tournament, losing to world number 117 Denis Istomin in 2017 at the Australian Open – the event he has won 10 times.
The exception to this rule is Rafael Nadal.
At Roland Garros, where he is a 14-time champion, Nadal has only been beaten by two players. One of them is Djokovic, statistically the best male player of all time. The other is Robin Soderling. Soderling’s loss is the closest Nadal has come to his “Bastl moment” at Roland Garros, but it was still a round of 16 match – and the opponent was nobody. Soderling was the 23rd seed and he would eventually become a top four player and two-time finalist at the French Open.
It was a different kind of upset, and overall, Nadal’s near-impeccable record, 112-3 in Paris, seems sacred, a record he doesn’t want to desecrate with an unedifying loss to a player with little appreciated.
All of this must be factored into Nadal’s thinking, as he conducts an in-depth analysis of his willingness to dance ahead of the 2024 tournament.
On Monday April 15, he confirmed that the ATP 500 tournament in Barcelona would mark his return from hip and abdominal injuries that have prevented him from participating since January, in Brisbane, for what was his first event in almost a year. His first match will take place on Tuesday April 16 against the Italian and world number 62 Flavio Cobolli.
Speaking at a press conference ahead of the event, he was cautiously optimistic. “I decided to come here at the last minute, but it’s been a positive week.
“The question is: can I or can’t I?” I have just had two difficult years: my body does not allow me to follow the calendar.
“I don’t know what can happen in the future, but I consider this my last participation in El Godó (the Barcelona Open). I don’t want to stop being competitive. There have been very hard days , physically and mentally, but the good days make up for it,” he said.
Nadal is desperate to get back into shape, after appealing to his fans that ‘you have no idea how hard it is for me not to be able to participate in these events’ following his withdrawal of Monte Carlo. He needs matches, not only for his fitness, but also for his momentum, to develop the muscle memory and match practice that even veterans of his talent need come Grand Slam time.
There is a but. Matches mean risking injury, and risking injury means risking Roland Garros.
He doesn’t want to do any of this without knowing that he won’t be exposed to the kind of humiliating defeat mentioned above. As Nadal’s near-contemporary Andy Murray said, it’s about competition, not just play. Murray also spent much of the year making tough decisions about how many extra punishments to take. he can take it – physically and mentally, as injuries return and losses to players he remembers sweeping multiply.
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In this context, it is understandable that Nadal puts a lot of thought into every decision he makes during a clay-court season where he remains the main topic of discussion without even playing. His statements sound like someone saying he could come to the party you’re telling him about, but he can’t commit yet.
The build-up to this Barcelona move was carefully managed.
“First practice… I’m delighted to be here a few days before the start of the tournament,” Nadal said upon his arrival in the city. “I’m here to see how it goes, with the desire to try to play. I’ll let you know. It’s important to say that I don’t want to confirm that I will play, but I hope so. We will see.”
On Friday, April 12, he added in another post: “Barcelona, today, Thursday. Training n°2. Step by step.” In another, simply the word “Barcelona” with a smiling face, accompanied by him sitting on a bench.
The open practice sessions were staged, with Nadal hitting groundstrokes under the watchful eye of fans and media, but without serving or moving laterally in the explosive manner for which he is renowned – the areas of his game who would be most affected by his injury. Toni Nadal said last week Spanish newspaper Marca says he has pain on serve, but no other problems. A 6-1 training defeat against world number 6 Andrey Rublev on Saturday (April 13) was the most encouraging sign of his game since his last competitive appearance on the Brisbane field in January; an abbreviated serving movement, designed to reduce stress on one’s lower body, to a lesser extent. When he appears in court on Tuesday, all eyes will be on his form.
Nadal is not precious. He has suffered many upsets during his career – they just never happened on clay.
For a time, humiliating defeats at Wimbledon were commonplace.
World number 100 Lukas Rosol in 2012. World number 135 Steve Darcis in 2013. World number 144 and 19-year-old Nick Kyrgios in 2014. World number 102 Dustin Brown in 2015.
These were all extremely painful defeats for Nadal, eroding his aura of invincibility and ultimately leading to the two worst seasons of his career, in 2015 and 2016. Similar defeats over the next few weeks would not have this consequence. effect. This should be Nadal’s last year on tour, whether he plays at Roland Garros or not.
Timing always matters because, in recent years, Nadal has seen his peers suffer at a similar stage in their careers to where he is now.
Serena Williams’ penultimate appearance at Wimbledon saw her forced to withdraw through injury six matches after her first round match against Aliaksandra Sasnovich in 2021. That same tournament saw Federer play the final singles match of his career , the one who took the only set he won. has never lost to love at Wimbledon. He later said of the 6-3, 7-6, 6-0 quarterfinal loss to Hubert Hurkacz: “TThe end of that match was one of the worst moments of my career because I felt really bad. It was over, the knee was gone.»
The following year, Williams, a seven-time Wimbledon champion, played her final match of the tournament – losing in the first round to world No. 115 Harmony Tan. Sampras’ loss to Bastl was his final match at Wimbledon – an indignity suffered in the vicinity of Court No. 2.
Nadal shares the inevitability of time and decline with his colleagues. What sets him apart is that for someone as dominant as he is on clay, any defeat on the surface will feel like a personal affront, a reminder of what was lost.
These absurd 14 titles at Roland Garros are not an exception on the court: he has 12 at the Barcelona Open, 11 at Monte Carlo and 10 at the Italian Open. He is so synonymous with the Barcelona event that the main court is named after him. Ranking points, 500 and 1000 aside, the pressure of returning to the surface you created, in a tournament you have consistently won, on a court that literally has your name on it, and suffering a defeat that gives to think about is almost too ridiculous to understand.
It was a risk he chose to take.
The reality is that Nadal could lose in the first round at Roland Garros without winning a match and it would hardly tarnish his unrivaled legacy at the tournament. But try telling that to the fiercest competitor tennis, and arguably any sport, has ever known. A defeat at Roland Garros 2024 would increase his tournament losing percentage from 2.6 percent to 3.4 percent, over 19 campaigns.
It’s an infinitesimal stain, barely a single ball mark on a field of pure triumph.
For Nadal, even more than for the whole world, this remains almost unthinkable.
(Photo: Tim Clayton/Corbis via Getty Images)