Rafa

by Rafael Nadal

  We did the best we could, but as I began training with the new shoes, new difficulties would keep cropping up, obliging us to keep on making tiny but critical changes to the soles. Years later, we still do. It’s a work in progress. We still haven’t got it absolutely right. Maybe there is no absolutely right solution. The fact is that years have passed since then, and the tarsal scaphoid bone still hurts me, obliging me at times to cut short training. It is the part of my body that Titín still spends the most time massaging. It remains under control, just, but we can never drop our guard.

  The fabulous news was that by February I was back in full training. And that month, after nearly four months away, I played my first tournament, in Marseille. To go out on court, hear my name called out on the loudspeaker, see and hear the crowds, go out and start warming up again before a match: I’d been dreaming about this or, rather, almost not daring to dream about it, yet here I was back again. I hadn’t won anything yet, but in the mere act of going out on court, I felt almost the same euphoria as if I had. I had recovered the life I thought I had lost, and never had I been so aware of the value of what I had, how immensely fortunate I was to be a professional tennis player, while understanding at the same time more clearly than ever before that the athlete’s life is short, and can be cut shorter at any moment. There was no time to waste, and from now on I would seize with both hands every single opportunity that came my way. Because from that time on I saw that I would never know entirely for sure whether a match I was playing would be my last. This understanding led me to only one conclusion: I’d have to play each one, and train for each one, as if it were my last. I had come close to tennis death; I had stared the end of my career in the face, and the experience, awful as it had been, had made me stronger mentally, given me the wisdom to see that life—any life—is a race against time.

  I was back in my stride far more quickly than I would have imagined possible, making it to the semifinals in Marseille and then winning my next tournament, in Dubai. There I beat Federer in the final, and on a hard court, the surface toughest on my foot. It was a fantastic confidence boost, for I knew now I was back. A curious thing I discovered, and an encouraging one, was that the foot hurt a lot more in training than when I was competing in a tournament. Titín, whose judgment I trust in practically all things, had an explanation. He said this was because the adrenaline and the endorphins kick in during a match, acting as nature’s painkiller, but also because during a match I’m in a state of concentration so deep, I’m so removed from the rest of the physical world, that even if the discomfort is there I notice it less.

  So one change we made after I came back from the injury was to train less. My physical trainer, Joan Forcades, had never been one to recommend long runs, something I know other tennis players do. When we did run, it would be for no more than half an hour or so. Now we cut out running altogether. Given that in normal circumstances I play about ninety matches a year, that in itself was quite enough to take care of my aerobic fitness. As a direct response to the fragility of my foot, we also cut back on the amount of training I did overall, both on court and physical training in the gym. Before the injury, until the age of eighteen, I’d do five hours a day or more; now I do three and a half, and less intensively than I used to. I don’t practice for two hours at 100 percent; I play forty-five minutes at 100 percent, and I look for more specific things to work on, such as the volley or the serve.

  I’ll never stop being a player who fights for every ball. My style remains defense and counterattack. But if I look at videos of myself during, for example, the Davis Cup final of 2004, in the match against Andy Roddick, I see a scrambling dynamism you don’t see quite so much in my game anymore. I am more measured; I economize more on my movements, and I have worked to improve my serve. It’s still not my strongest point and remains distinctly weaker than Federer’s and many other players’. But I did consciously work on it for my return to tennis in February 2006, and as Toni reminds me, there was a significant increase in speed. He says that before the injury I was serving at 160 kilometers per hour; in Marseille I served regularly at more than 200.

  The faster serve should have helped me in the two big tournaments I always play in the U.S. early in the year, Indian Wells and Miami, but I failed once again in both. In Miami I fell in the very first round to my old friend Carlos Moyá. No favors there, but then again I had hardly been soft on him at our first meeting in Hamburg three years earlier.

  And then it was back to the Mediterranean again. Returning to Monte Carlo that year was like coming home. I was back on clay, in the place where I’d won my very first ATP tournament. Once again I came up against Federer in the final, and once again I won. Then I faced him again in the final at Rome. It was a killer match, a true test of whether I had recovered from my injury. I had. The match went to five sets, lasted five hours; I saved two match points, and I won. And then it was Roland Garros and a chance I thought I’d never have just four months earlier of preserving my French Open crown. It meant more to me to be back here now than it had to be here the year before, even though that had been my first time. Winning this would mean, for me and my family, that the nightmare we’d gone through would be, if not forgotten, exorcised, and we could resume, in a clear and confident state of mind, the victorious trajectory that had been so nearly terminally curtailed. And I had a point to prove: I wanted to show that my win in 2005 had not been a one-off, that I was in the Grand Slam league to stay.

  I made it to the final by a tough route, beating some of the top players of the moment, among them Robin Soderling of Sweden, Lleyton Hewitt of Australia, and, in the quarterfinals, Novak Djokovic. A year younger than me, Djokovic was a hell of a player, temperamental but hugely talented. Toni and I had been talking about him and I’d been watching him in my rearview mirror, looming closer, for a while now. He’d been racing up the rankings, and I had a strong feeling that he would be neck and neck with me before too long, that it would not just be me, but me and him, against Federer. Djokovic had a strong serve and was fast and wiry and strong—often dazzling—on both forehand and backhand. Above all, I could see he had big ambitions and a winner’s temperament. More a hard court than a clay court player, he was competitive enough to make it difficult for me in the Roland Garros quarters. I won the first two sets 6–4, 6–4, and was preparing for a long afternoon’s work when unfortunately for him, but fortunately for me, he had to pull out with an injury.

  In the final it was Federer again. I lost the first set 6–1, but won the next three, the final one on a tiebreak. Watching the video of the match later, I thought Federer played better than me overall, but in an atmosphere of high tension (he, so eager to complete the foursome of major titles; me, so desperate to banish the ghosts of my exile), I stuck it out.

  As Carlos Moyá saw it, Federer was not fully Federer when he played against me. Carlos said I had beaten him by attrition, badgering him into untypical mistakes for a man of such enormous natural talent. That had been the plan, but I also think I won because I’d won the year before and that gave me a confidence I might otherwise have lacked, especially against Federer. Whatever the case, I’d won my second Grand Slam.

  After all I had been through, it was an incredibly emotional moment. I ran up into the stands, as I had done the year before, and this time it was my father I sought. We hugged hard and we were both crying. “Thank you, Daddy, for everything!” I said. He doesn’t like to show his feelings. He had felt the need to look strong and composed during my injury, but it was not until now that I fully grasped how hard he’d battled to stop himself from breaking down. Then I hugged my mother, who was also in tears. The thought that filled my mind at that moment of victory was that it was their support that had pulled me through. Winning the French Open in 2006 meant that we’d come through the worst; we’d overcome a challenge we feared might overwhelm us, and we had come out the stronger for it. For my father, I know, that was the moment of greatest joy of my entire career. As he saw it, if
my foot had held out against the best of the best, it would continue to hold out for a good while to come. For him, who understood best of all what I’d gone through, it meant a return to life.

  I could now realistically start thinking again about achieving my life’s longstanding dream: winning Wimbledon. Carlos Costa remembers that my reaction to winning the French Open the first time, in 2005, had been, “Right, now for Wimbledon.” At the time, he has since confessed, he thought I was setting my sights too high. He honestly didn’t think I had it in me to win there. But after my victory at Roland Garros in 2006, when once again I declared that I was going to win Wimbledon, he told me he had begun to change his mind. Partly because grass was the most benign surface for my foot, but most of all because he had now convinced himself I had the temperament to win on such a stage. Carlos, who as a former top tennis player has a wary respect for the Grand Slams, did not think, on the other hand, that the other two big ones, the US Open and the Australian Open, were within my reach. But Wimbledon, yes. He joined me in the idea that I’d one day lift the golden trophy.

  For all my outward confidence, the truth was that I lacked the necessary self-belief to win it when the chance came one month later. I did make it to the final at Wimbledon, but Federer beat me, more comfortably than the score line of 6-0, 7-6, 6-7, 6-3 suggested.

  But now it was 2008, two years later, and I was two sets to one up, and serving. In terms of sheer quality of play, the fourth was maybe the best set we played in the final. Both of us were at the very top of our games, ending long rallies with one winner after another, making few errors. I was always a game ahead because I served first, so Federer was always serving to stay in the match, but he succeeded every time. Don’t ever say Federer is not a fighter.

  The set went to a tiebreak and it was me to serve first. The Centre Court crowd had by now lost all restraint, one half yelling “Roger! Roger!”; the other, “Rafa! Rafa!” On the first point, for once, I went up to the net, instantly receiving a reminder of why I do it so rarely. Federer passed me comfortably down the forehand side. A bad start. But then I went on an amazing streak. Confident, master of my game, I won both points on his serve. Then, handing Federer some of his own medicine, I served an ace, followed by another good first serve he could not return. I was up 4–1. If I held my remaining serves, I’d be Wimbledon champion. I didn’t dare imagine victory yet, though all my shots were coming off. But I wasn’t pumping my fists, as in similar circumstances elsewhere I usually would; I was very deliberately keeping myself as cool and focused as I could, trying to give an impression of nervelessness, remembering all the time this was Federer, a tennis player more equipped to pull something out of nothing than anyone alive.

  He was serving now, and I was more relaxed than I knew I would be on my next serve because I’d broken him twice and was ahead. If I grabbed a point on his serve, it would be an unexpected plus. But I was not depending on this. I didn’t have the same pressure as he did to win the next two points, and that gave me a momentary respite, until my turn came to serve. I told myself: “Stick to the game plan, keep hitting high topspins to his backhand.” But he worked around the backhand on the next point, winning it with an electric forehand down the line.

  We changed sides with me 4–2 up. I took my customary sip of water from each of my two bottles; he walked back on court. I jumped up after him and ran to receive. The next rally was nervy and long, fifteen shots, both of us playing cautiously, me containing what might have been the suicidal urge to finish things off with a winning drive, and the point ending with him losing his nerve first and hitting a backhand well wide. I allowed myself a moment of celebration: a discreet, controlled, slow-motion punch. Nothing too exuberant, nothing the crowd on the Centre Court could see, but inside—I couldn’t help myself—I felt this was nearly, nearly it. Serving, at 5–2 up, I felt I was within touching distance of my life’s dream. And that was my downfall.

  Until now, the adrenaline had beaten the nerves; now suddenly the nerves trumped all. I felt as if I were on the edge of a precipice. As I bounced the ball up and down before my first serve, I thought, “Where should I hit it? Should I be brave and aim at his body, trying to catch him by surprise, even though I failed with that gambit a couple of sets back?” I shouldn’t have given it so much thought. I should have served wide to his backhand, as I had been doing all the way through. But I aimed straight and hard and hit it long. Now I was very, very nervous. I had entered unknown territory, never having felt sensations quite like this before. As I tossed the ball up, I said to myself, “Double fault danger: don’t blow it.” But I knew I’d blow it. I was so, so tight. And, yes, I hit the second serve, tamely, into the net. The nerves were eating me up. But it wasn’t the fear of losing that was causing it; it was the fear of winning. I wanted to win Wimbledon so desperately badly, I longed to win this match and had longed for this moment all my life: this was the great core truth that I had striven to keep hidden from myself by seeking to concentrate on the match one point at a time, never looking back or looking forward. But the temptation to look forward proved too great; my excitement on the brink of victory betrayed me.

  What the fear of winning means is that, while you know what shot you have to play, the legs and the head do not respond. The nerves take possession of them and you can’t hold on; you can’t endure. It wasn’t fear of losing, because at no point in the match did I feel I wasn’t capable of winning. I never lost heart. From start to finish I felt I deserved not to lose, that I was doing everything right and that I had prepared myself in the best possible way before the match had begun.

  But as I stood poised to serve again at 5–3, the conviction had gone. I lost my courage. Because instead of carrying on playing, putting that setback of the double fault immediately out of my mind, I let it influence my next serve. I was thinking, “Whatever you do, get the first serve in. Don’t risk a second double fault. Just get the first one in, any way you can!” And I did, but it was a weak serve, a cautious second serve masquerading as a first serve, a coward’s serve. Yes, that is the right word. It was a moment of cowardliness. And it allowed him immediately to go on the attack. He hit his return deep, I returned the shot short, he hit deep again, and I failed—abysmally—on the backhand return, hitting the ball lame and low into the net. It was a far from impossible shot to get back; nine times out of ten there would have been no problem. I might even have hit a winner from it. But my arm had tightened, my rhythm was shot, my body out of position. Instead of leaning with conviction into the stroke, my legs had been all over the place, a mangle of twisted nerves.

  It was 5–4, his service. The initiative had shifted to Federer. He delivered a great first serve, wide to my forehand. I clawed it back, short, and he put away a winner. I was thinking, “I’ve screwed up. But it’s 5–5 and I’m still in the tiebreak. If I win a point, this point, I’ll have a match point to be champion of Wimbledon. I’m thinking, ‘What a screwup, but I’ll go for this point.’ ” But he banged down another great serve and I was almost done for. Now it was he who was on set point, with me serving. Suddenly, I was not as nervous as I had been; not as worried about doing a double fault. I’d backed off the precipice. The fear of winning had gone, and I was in a situation that was less comfortable but to which I was more accustomed: battling to save the set. I hit my first serve into the net, but now I was no longer thinking “double fault.” I hit a decent second serve, and a long rally began, with me pummeling his backhand. I hit the ball wide to his forehand but a little short, and there he had his chance. He went for a winning drive and it went wide.

  We changed sides again. As always, Federer resumed his position before I did. I had to towel myself down, take my two swigs from my two bottles of water. Then I trotted back to take up my position to serve. I struck a good first serve at last, initiating a strong rally in which we both hit the ball hard and deep—in his case, finally, a little too deep. The ball was called long, but he challenged it. The image on the screen show
ed that the line judge had been right. It had been a moment of desperation from Federer, but I understood it. I’d have done the same at such a critical moment. I now had match point, on his serve. But he responded like the great champion he is, blasting down another of his unstoppable serves.

  Just in case, more in hope than expectation, I looked at the umpire and issued a challenge of my own. It went his way. The ball had landed square on the line. We were 7–7, and an incredible point followed. For me. He hit a deep second serve, we exchanged a couple of shots, he thundered a forehand wide and deep to my forehand, I ran across the back of the baseline, he rushed to the net, and I passed him low and straight down the line. An amazing shot.

  I had another match point, and now I had conquered my nerves. I thought I deserved to be where I was and that I was on the brink of conquering Wimbledon. Dumb. Really dumb. It was one of the very, very few moments in my entire career in which I thought I’d won, before I’d won. The emotions got the better of me, and I forgot the golden rule in tennis, more than any other sport, that it’s not over till it’s over.