by Rafael Nadal
The whole story of my match so far had been one of missed opportunities. Not capitalizing on a love–40 on his serve to break him in the third set, missing two match points in the fourth, and now, in the fifth, not breaking him when I was 15–40 up on his serve at 5–5 or love–30 up at 6–6. Now he was 7–6 up, and yet again I was serving to save my life. But I was more thrilled than fearful. I’d missed opportunities, but they had been my opportunities. They were something to celebrate rather than to lament. And sooner or later—I forced myself to think—I’d take my chance.
But he won the first point. A good, long return of serve and then an unanswerable winner. Nothing for me to do or say there. He played a great point. On to the next one. I recovered quickly. He hit a forehand long; I hit a first serve to his body that he could do nothing about, and then a long rally, where I returned every shot he hit with interest, ended with him hitting tamely into the net. He had failed to get his legs into position for the shot; he was more tired than I was. Seeing that gave me strength. But not overconfidence. I might have thought, “I’ve got him now,” but I didn’t. I thought, “I’m still in this, I can win.” But I also knew that if I lost the next point he’d be two points away from being Wimbledon champion. And I did lose the next point, after he got a lucky net cord.
Then, at 40–30, one of the very best points in the match. I served wide to his backhand; he returned deep and well to my forehand. I pinned him back but he hit a strong backhand cross-court, to which I responded with an equally strong forehand down the line. He only just made it across, leaving him with no option but to hit an awkward sliced forehand that sailed just over the net and short. I scooped up a topspin shot low and wide to his backhand, and all he could respond with was a lob that I should have put away on the smash, but he somehow got to it, delivering another high, slow but better lob that obliged me to retreat and hit another less winnable smash, a controlled one with spin—like a second serve—after it had bounced. He got that one back too, with a sliced backhand to midcourt; I advanced on the ball and hit it, with all my might on the forehand, and with all the heavy topspin I could muster for an unreachable winner, deep to his right-hand corner. 7–7. It was my moment of greatest euphoria in the match so far. I raised my left knee, punched the air, roared in triumph. I had a rush of energy, a new charge of confidence, and I thought, “Come on, now!”
The match was there for the taking. But I had no vision of victory yet. I was still taking it one point at a time. “My rhythm’s good, my mobility is good, and I’m playing with conviction”: that was how I felt. And I felt that now, at 7–7, the time really had come to go for the match; the momentum was with me and I should seize my chance. This was a game I had to win.
On the first point of his serve I picked up where I’d left off on my own service game, winning the rally on a cross-court forehand winner at which he could only flail. Then he messed up a forehand, into the net, and I was up love–30. Another big opportunity. But I am not a machine, I am not a locomotive. And on the next point I made a silly mistake. I opted for a backhand slice when I should have gone for a drive. For that split second, of all the split seconds, a tiny doubt entered my head, and I lost the point. Fear of winning. But not as serious as last time. My legs were not shaking. They felt strong.
I returned his next serve deep and won the point with a flashing cross-court backhand winner. I rolled my wrists, steering the ball with my right hand, powering it with my left arm—a shot I’d practiced all my life and that, when the moment of truth came, I hit as perfectly as I ever had. Two break points now, and my biggest fear was not that I’d fail but that he’d start pulling more of those big serves out of the hat. He did. An ace. Then another big serve. I slipped on the grass, lost my coordination; we were back to deuce.
I’d been here before. Over and over. This game was turning out to be a version in miniature of the whole match. Me pulling ahead; he, fighting back and back, refusing to go down. But he was still making more mistakes than I was, as he did on the next point, hitting a forehand out, very long, to give me advantage point. We were both at the outer edge of our capacity to endure, but, physically and mentally, he was more drained than I was. But he still had his serve, and bang came another unstoppable one that I could only flap at with the frame of my racket. But the moment I made a decent return of serve and the rally was on, it was me who got the upper hand. I won the next two points on two mistakes he made, two unforced errors on his forehand, one too short, one too long.
And here it was: a break of service at last. The score was 8–7 and I was serving for the match. It was after nine at night and it was getting dark fast. If we were back level after this game, the umpire might very well postpone the match to the next day. Such an interruption now, after four and three quarter hours of play, could only help Federer. I hadn’t realized that as clearly when rain had come down earlier, but now there was no doubt he needed a respite more than I did. I thought, “I have to win this game by whatever means.”
I ran to take up my position on the baseline, Federer walked to his. I was serving from the end where my parents were sitting, and they each stood up to give me a frenzied thumbs-up. But I lost the first point, a needlessly long forehand. The instant I prepared to hit the shot, I could see I was going to miss it, the mind clouded by nerves. I had to conquer those nerves right now, and the way to do it was to raise my aggression a notch. I had to beat myself before I could beat Federer. For the first time in the entire match I followed my serve up to the net, and it worked. I punched his return away for a winner. I hadn’t planned it before I hit the serve, but it turned out to be the right spur-of-the-moment choice. If I’d let the ball bounce before hitting, the point would have remained open. The score was 15–15.
I won the next point at the net too, going in for the kill, an easy kill head high on the forehand volley, after forcing Federer wide and deep on his backhand. Again, it was a spontaneous decision to rush the net, the fruit of my determination to seize the game and not let the game seize me. 30–15 now, but I still wasn’t seeing the finish line. Only the next point existed. Going to the net was a calculated risk in the growing darkness, and this time my calculation was wrong. So much so that I stuck my racket out at a forehand from Federer that, had I left it, would have gone well long, and I’d have had two match points. But I’d lost the point bravely, and that was better than losing on a double fault, or on a craven backhand slice.
30–30. “I’m still here,” I thought. Reverting to my game plan, I attacked his backhand on the next rally and—maybe it was the light, or the exhaustion, or the nerves—he mishit a cross-court shot, sending it wide.
40–30 and match point, my third one of the match. I stuck to the safe and trusted option, a wide first serve to his backhand, which he returned with stunning brilliance and courage, with a cross-court thunderbolt that I strained but failed to reach. This was Roger Federer, the greatest player of all time, and this was why, even now, no thought of victory, no suggestion of complacency, was allowed. We were back to deuce.
Here I had the brilliant idea—it was, in retrospect, quite brilliant—of hitting my first serve wide to his forehand, when he had to be expecting that at a clutch moment like this I’d stick to the backhand route I’d been following practically the whole match. I managed to do, finally, what he’d been doing to me all match, curving down an unreturnable first serve. Not quite an ace, for he touched it with the end of his racket, but as good as. I had my fourth match point.
I hesitated on the serve. I should have gone for the backhand corner again, but I still registered in some corner of my mind that amazing backhand return of his on my previous match point, and so I aimed for the body instead. The serve ended up being neither one thing nor the other, and he might well have hit it for another winner, this time on the forehand, or put me under serious pressure at least. He did neither, returning the ball with little bite, giving me a simple forehand return that I hit with less conviction than I should have. He adv
anced on the ball, which dropped gently mid-court, and he hooked it, not for a winner, but badly, awkwardly, feet out of position, into the middle of the net.
I collapsed flat on my back on the Wimbledon grass, arms outstretched, fists clenched, roaring with triumph. The silence of the Centre Court gave way to pandemonium, and I succumbed, at long last, to the crowd’s euphoria, letting it wash over me, liberating myself from the mental prison I had inhabited from start to finish of the match, all day, the night before, the full two weeks of the greatest tennis tournament on earth. Which I had finally won, at the third attempt: the consummation of my life’s work, sacrifice, and dreams. The fear of losing, the fear of winning, the frustrations, the disappointments, the poor decisions, the moments of cowardice, the dread of ending up weeping once again on the floor of the locker room shower: all gone now. It wasn’t relief I felt; I was beyond that. It was a rush of power and elation, an uncorking of emotion I had kept bottled up for the tensest four hours and forty-eight minutes of my life, an invasion of the purest joy.
Yet somehow I had to contain myself. I had to go up to the net to shake hands with Roger, from whom, after four years of waiting, I was about to take the number one spot in the world rankings, and the stiff formalities of the trophy presentation ceremony still beckoned. But the tears came, and there was nothing I could do to stop them, and there was one more thing I had to do before the ceremony, one emotional release I needed before I could behave with some semblance of the restraint that Wimbledon tradition required. I ran toward the corner where my father and mother and Toni, Titín, Carlos Costa, Tuts, and Dr. Cotorro had been sitting, and were now standing, and I clambered up the seats and scaled a wall to reach them. I was crying, and my father, the first to greet me, was crying too, and we hugged, and I hugged my mother, and I hugged Toni and the three of us all held one another in one great, tight family embrace.
Was that the greatest moment of my career? Every match is important; I play every one as if it is my last, but that one, in that setting, with that history, that expectation, that tension, the rain interruptions, the darkness, the number one against the number two, both of us playing at the top of our games, the comeback by Federer and my resistance to it, me prouder than I ever had been of my attitude on a tennis court, haunted by the recollection of defeat in 2007 but fighting and winning my own war of nerves . . . so, yes, put it all together, and it’s almost impossible to imagine any other match that could have generated so much drama and emotion and, for me, and for those closest to me, such enormous satisfaction and joy.
* * *
The Longest Day
The 2008 Wimbledon final between Rafa Nadal and Roger Federer was the longest in the tournament’s 131-year history and, for many, the greatest tennis match there had ever been. John McEnroe, at the Centre Court commentating for American television, said it had been the best he’d seen. Björn Borg, who had also been ringside, but as a spectator, and who had defeated McEnroe in the greatest Wimbledon duel anyone could remember before this one, agreed that Nadal and Federer had served up the best match in history. Some members of the world’s sports press suggested it had been the finest contest in any sport, period. The New York Times felt the match had been so unique it merited an editorial all of its own.
“The light slips away and though everyone feels the cumulative weight of what has come before, the players are still having to play in the present,” the Times editorial said with uncanny insight, “still having to set aside the past in order to return another serve, while everyone in the crowd wonders how they do it—not just the imagination of the ball-striking, but the ability not to imagine, not to leap forward in their minds to winning or losing. Their desire is concealed in the play itself. But ours has gotten loose and is making it hard to breathe—hard even to watch.”
If the Times editorial writer had found it hard to breathe, it is a wonder the Nadal family didn’t die of collective asphyxia. “When it was over, I wept tears of elation,” said Sebastián Nadal, after his longest day was finally over, “but I also had this sensation that my body had suddenly grown lighter, as if a huge weight had been lifted from my back. I had spent the whole match tortured by that awful fear that it would be 2007 all over again, that he would end up in tears in the shower and I would be able to do nothing to ease his grief.
“It was Tyson versus Holyfield out there, and I felt as if I’d been in the ring with them, exhausted, as if I’d suffered a terrible beating. People said my face changed during that match, that when they saw me on TV they couldn’t recognize me. It was pure suffering, all the way through.”
Toni Nadal knew Rafa the tennis player better than anyone, but even he had been staggered by the depths of resilience his nephew had showed. “Wimbledon had always been our dream, but in my heart of hearts I always feared it was an impossible dream,” Toni said. “I had always pushed him to set his sights higher and higher, but I did not honestly believe he could climb this high. When he won, it was the first time I had ever cried on a tennis court.”
Nadal’s mother, Ana María, said the match had left her, as the Spanish expression goes, reduced to dust. “During the match there were moments when I just wanted it to stop. I thought, ‘Leave it. Why does it have to matter so much whether you win or lose?’ I kept asking myself how he could bottle up all that tension so tightly. Where does he get it from, my own son? How does he manage to stop falling apart?”
Carlos Moyá believes that, under such pressure, he himself would most definitely have fallen apart. “Just about any other player in history against Federer, playing with the courage and brilliance that he was, would have lost that match. When you’ve been so, so close and yet you haven’t won, when you get to a fifth set, which basically means starting the match all over again, after having had victory in your hands, the emotions—if you are a normal player, or even a normal champion—just have to run away with you. You remember every missed chance, and those memories eat you up, devour your game. But not in Rafa’s case. That’s why he is no ordinary champion. Everything favored Federer at the start of the fifth, yet Rafa dominated him, tamed him, outplayed him.”
Nadal, for Moyá that day, was a creature that refused to die. “Federer learned in that final that to beat Rafa you have to stomp on him not once, not twice, but many, many times. You think he’s dead, in a point or in a game or in a set, but he keeps on coming back. That is why I think he can go on to beat all the records, why I think that, if he stays fit, he is capable of winning more Grand Slams than anyone ever has before.”
Federer—world number one just for another three weeks, after which Nadal would snatch the title away from him—was shattered in defeat. “Probably my hardest loss—by far; I mean it’s not much harder than this right now,” said Federer, struggling to be coherent. “I’m disappointed,” he added. “And I’m crushed.”
Nadal, almost apologetic, insisted after it was all over that Federer had been the best player in history and remained the best. “He’s still five-time champion here. Right now I have one.”
Nadal’s graciousness in victory might have made some people wonder whether, in between matches, he took courses in public speaking. He did not. Nadal’s post-match generosity toward Federer was the habit, evolved into a reflex, of someone who as a child was ordered by his father to congratulate opponents after a football match when his team had been beaten; it was the consequence of having been taught all his life—by his uncle Toni as by his parents—to keep his feet on the ground, of having had it drummed into him that while his achievements might sometimes be special, he himself was not.
“It was a great moment when we saw him take the Wimbledon trophy in his hands,” Sebastián Nadal said, “but when you pause to reflect on it all, it’s not that much more special than when they give your child a diploma after graduating from college. Every family has its moments of joy. The day after Rafael won Wimbledon, once all the excitement and the media attention had quieted down, I didn’t feel any greater satisfaction
than I know I will, for example, the day my daughter gets her university degree. Because, in the end, what you want is for your children to be happy and well.”
Nadal’s mother, Ana María, also refused to get carried away by her son’s achievements. “Sometimes people say to me, ‘How lucky you’ve been with your son!’ And I reply, ‘I’ve been lucky with my two children!’ I don’t give much importance to the fact that Rafael is a super champion, because what makes me happiest in life is the knowledge that I have two children who are good people. They’re responsible, they have very close and good friends, they are attached to their family, which is very important for them both, and they haven’t given us any problems. This is the real triumph. When all this is over, Rafael will be the same person, my son—and that’s it.”
The family all flew back to Mallorca the day after the Wimbledon final, and it was straight back to life as usual. Did they have a celebration party? “No,” said Sebastián Nadal. “There was the official dinner the night of the match, for which we arrived incredibly late because Rafael had to do so many media interviews, and that was it. We’re not very given to celebrations. I remember the match, and always will, but as to what happened afterwards? Nothing much.”
Toni Nadal, asked the same question, echoed his elder brother’s words. “No, no. I’m not very festive when we win. The satisfaction was enormous, of course. The whole family’s. But we Mallorcans, we’re not much given to celebration.”
