There was a phase, not very many days ago in the year, where Rafael Nadal did things that defied convention.
Switch on for the new season and win an ATP title having shut off the last four months of 2021 battling a foot injury. Turn up at a Grand Slam he hadn’t won in more than a decade and steamroll to the Australian Open crown. Walk away with the French Open two months after suffering a rib stress fracture. Go deep into the Wimbledon semi-finals without playing a single competitive match on grass.
It stops there—for now, at least.
Out to add the US Open cherry to his cake of largely unpredicted fruits this season, the Spaniard crashed out in the fourth round of the year-ending Slam, which will now see a new, non-Big Three male champion. American Frances Tiafoe, playing like a millionaire going for broke with his shots, excelled and entertained the home Arthur Ashe Stadium crowd in a 6-4, 4-6, 6-4, 6-3 victory.
As the 24-year-old sat on his chair after the biggest victory of his career that also handed Nadal his first defeat in a Slam this year, he was still shaking his head in apparent disbelief. So was Nadal heading inside the walkway to the locker room.
In some ways though, in a season full of surprises from Nadal, this was hardly one.
The 36-year-old’s Wimbledon run was snapped by an abdominal tear, forcing him to pull out before his semi-final against Nick Kyrgios. It was his second major physical setback of the season that kept him out for another month. When he did return again, in Cincinnati last month, he lost to Borna Coric in the first match.
So, much like at the Australian Open at the start of the year, Nadal headed into the US Open with precious little game time while coming off an injury. But while the after-effects of winning a title showed in Melbourne where he cruised through the early rounds, it wasn’t the case in New York.
Nadal dropped his opening set of the tournament in the four-set win over the unheralded Rinky Hijikata. He then had “one of the worst starts” to a match playing Fabio Fognini in the next round, in which he also conveyed to his box in an on-court conversation of feeling “very anxious” and had a freak nose accident.
“I have been practising well the week before, honestly. But then when the competition started, my level went down,” Nadal said after the loss. “For some reason, I don’t know, mental issues in terms of a lot of things happened the last couple of months.”
As it has been a lot of times in Nadal’s career, the physical issues too played its part.
“We can think, if I (didn’t) get injured, maybe I win Wimbledon,” he said. “That’s part of my career. A lot of times went the proper way—sometimes completely unexpected like Australia, like Roland Garros (this year). Of course, this was not the ideal preparation for me… We can’t find excuses.”
Against Tiafoe, he found no answers. The world No 3 was out-served, out-hit and out-run by the 26th-ranked American whose forehands constantly pierced the Nadal defence. Playing his first day session of the tournament amid humid conditions—the roof too was briefly shut—Nadal appeared slow in his movement and increasingly exhausted as the match wore on.
His serves let him down—Nadal had nine double faults—and his slicing tactics to counter Tiafoe’s bullets from the baseline didn’t really work. The fitter and more energetic American dictated play: he comfortably led in the winners count (49 to 33) and points won on first and second serves (76% and 60%). The second set which Tiafoe lost was to a double fault by the thinnest of margins on set point.
“The difference is easy,” Nadal said. “I played a bad match and he played a good match.”
Tiafoe had been Nadal’s practice partner a few years ago. He’d come a long way already then from hitting with kids at the Junior Tennis Champions Center in Maryland. That’s where his father worked as a maintenance person, having immigrated from Sierra Leone in the early nineties.
With his mother working night shifts as a nurse, Frances and his twin brother Franklin would often sleep in spare rooms of the centre while his father prepared the courts for the next day. The brothers soon became part of the bunch of kids playing and learning tennis at the centre. Frances, the former world No. 2 in the junior circuit, would kick on for greater things.
“It wasn’t anything supposed to be like this,” he said. “Once we got in the game of tennis, my dad was like, it would be awesome if you guys can use this as a full scholarship to school.”
Beating the 22-time Grand Slam champion for a US Open quarter-final is quite awesome too, isn’t it?
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