Nadal Is Stuck Inside a Cloud

By HARVEY ARATON
Sports of The Times
July 4, 2007

Wimbledon, England

It was half past seven on another miserable Wimbledon evening when Rafael Nadal trudged up the stairs of the players’ quarters in a white hooded sweatshirt, looking tired and sad and for a ride out of the All England Club, any way out of his personal tennis hell.

A companion whispered something in his ear. Nadal forced a smile. Somebody asked him how he was doing and he said, “O.K., O.K.,” with an expression that seemed to say he could use a stiff drink.

What do you do when one tennis match spans four infuriating days, when the sun shines when you are not supposed to play and conspires with rain clouds when you are, and when your archrival is two rounds ahead of you, on a four-day holiday from the tournament he is already an overwhelming favorite to win?

Write a newspaper blog. Play video games. Cue 10 hours of “The Godfather” in Spanish into the DVD player and wish that Michael Corleone would make stubborn Wimbledon officials an offer they couldn’t refuse in any language they could understand.

As Nadal wrote in his daily Times of London dispatch, he was already distressed by Wimbledon’s tumultuous weather and traditional ways after Day 1 of a third-round odyssey that will maddeningly continue into a fifth day today, with Nadal and Robin Soderling deadlocked at 4-4 in the fifth set.

In a Saturday night posting, Nadal had written: “Tomorrow, there is no play at Wimbledon, something I don’t really understand considering that we did not play today. That means that we will play on Monday and whoever wins of the two also on Tuesday and if win also on Wednesday. Not understandable!!!”

He later wrote that he wasn’t being critical, only driven crazy by his wet and wacky Wimbledon, a three-exclamation-point parody that deserved a few more when he was made to wait through a three-set women’s match and six more rain delays yesterday before play was suspended for the night.

More to the point, for the seventh time since Nadal and Soderling began warming up on Court 1 late Saturday afternoon, the last day of June.

Like mice in a maze, Nadal is trapped with Soderling, unable to escape an increasingly defiant and openly hostile Swede in a fast-failing pursuit of Roger Federer, the four-time defending champion.

We know the hallowed grass courts here have a long history of being inhospitable to clay-court grinders, but what did Nadal ever do to Wimbledon — besides demonstrate his sincere intention of winning it, and pushing Federer in last year’s final — to deserve consignment with Soderling in this waterlogged state of symbiosis?

In fairness to the tournament, Nadal did have match point on his racket, his preferred forehand side, with Soderling out of position, during a third-set tie breaker Monday afternoon. Nadal missed it long, lost that set and then another, and now can only dream of his beloved Paris, or Paris Hilton, for that matter. Anything but the predicament he is in.

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Five scheduled days remain in the tournament and four men, including Nadal, have not yet completed the third round. To win the title, Nadal must survive Soderling today, then play a best-of-five-set match every day and finally deal with Federer’s magic, or perhaps Andy Roddick’s serve, on Sunday, weather (hah!) permitting.

“It’s going to make it very tough physically,” Nadal said. “But first, I have to win tomorrow. I wish this match was over already, but I missed the match point and then we have rain and more rain, and I think it hurt me more because I was ahead.”

Federer has been idle since Friday, is through to the quarterfinals by walkover, free to model his spiffy brand sportswear around town and, in the understated words of Lleyton Hewitt, “probably not complaining about too many things right at the moment.”

Not compared with Nadal, who was on court for a nine-minute stretch and for another 12 yesterday, or about as many official minutes as it took to warm up. Nadal was ahead, 2-0, in the fifth set after Monday, but Soderling broke back and had a couple of break points at 3-3 before Nadal held with the aid of a tumbling, Beckeresque backhand half-volley. Then the sky turned into a scene from “Ghostbusters,” sending Nadal off snarling, still unable to fathom how the Wimbledon sport coats let Sunday go by with no matches with the early week forecast as bad as it was.

“Sunday was the best day, perfect,” he said before leaving the grounds. “We should have played, sure.”

He is 21, the king of the clay courts, tanned, buff and handsome, rich beyond most journalists’ dreams and therefore difficult to summon an abundance of pity for. But the least the tournament could have done yesterday was get Nadal on Court 1 before Jelena Jankovic and Marion Bartoli, allowing him the best chance of finishing and showing some respect for the No. 2-seeded player, defending finalist and godsend to the men’s Tour.

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For all his on-court swagger, Nadal is a colorful, creative character who is always gracious in victory and defeat and who has a lot more in his arsenal than his muscular arms would suggest. Yet he awoke yesterday to a commentary in The Times of London — his own newspaper — mocking his game and style and calling his “abrasive physical presence” the tennis version of terror.

Under any circumstances, much less the current ones in London, this was as over the top, as nutty as it gets, but also a telling commentary on what kind of Wimbledon it has been for Nadal. To say the least, not understandable!!!