PARIS – While Rafael Nadal looked at the ground as if trying to find impossible answers, the giant screen of the Philippe Chatrier stadium showed dozens of fans waiting to take a picture with his statue, a few meters away from the main court.
Roland Garros is his venue, but on the sunny afternoon of July 29, dressed up as the Olympic Games, it didn’t look like it. There, Novak Djokovic crushed him as never seen before and showed him that he is no longer the same player who had a balanced rivalry with the Serb for sixty episodes, since they met in 2006 on the same clay.
If there was an instance in which the chances of Nadal were higher, it was in a match like this: on clay, on the court where he won 113 matches out of 117 played, and in an Olympic Games, where the matches are played to the best of three sets, being the five sets a very big physical disadvantage for the 14-time Roland Garros champion.
Djokovic did whatever he wanted with Nadal for most part of the match. Drop shots to which the Spaniard did not even run, deep shots that destabilized him, and imposing the great positioning he has on the court that made it seem that he made much less effort than his opponent.
The imbalance was remarkable and Nadal paid dearly for it. Djokovic is still on his way to his golden obsession after the 6-1, 6-4 win over his sporting nemesis.
“Rafa, Rafa,” shouted the crowd, wanting to lift their champion. Very “nadalist” stands, although not at all hurtful to the Serb as it had been the last time they faced each other, in this same stadium at Roland Garros 2022.
They managed to give the Paris favorite some boost. He was confused until the middle of the second set and managed to come back to the surface to rescue good sensations, and give the audience the lost emotions: the match that showed high levels of electricity in the atmosphere until the first games, was extinguished with so many unforced errors of the Spaniard. Fortunately for many, it did have that dose of the Nadal versus Djokovic of yesteryear, although it did not last long.
The difference in physical condition between the two was too noticeable. Both the Serb and the Spaniard showing sporting war wounds. Djokovic with a knee brace after undergoing meniscus surgery, and Nadal with a bandage on his right thigh that had him in doubt until the last minute.
Nadal will find out if the decision to have also signed up for the singles was the right one and if his body did not pay the consequences of a wear and tear that perhaps left him in a more complicated situation. And not only physically, but also mentally. Together with Alcaraz showed to be serious candidates for the title, unless this experience generates consequences.
Because being crushed by the archrival, in the field he knows best and where he has achieved more successes, and having shown a version so far from the one who built one of the most successful careers in history, is something difficult to digest.
