French Open 2013: The Rafael Nadal legend continues to grow

As Fabio Fognini, dressed in an all-blue ensemble, pummeled yet another crosscourt backhand past a scampering Rafael Nadal, one of the TV commentators had this observation to make: “If you were told that you’d be seeing a 7-time French Open champion in action today, a man whose vicious forehand gives nightmares to the rest of the field, you’d be scratching your head right now. Who is that player, exactly?” To which the other commentator replied, in an apparent bid to be funny (or smart, I’m not sure), “You’d probably think it was the man in blue”. Never mind the fact that Nadal was, at that very moment, leading by two sets and a break. What had Nadal done to deserve this?

Every player has bad days, and today wasn’t an specially rip-roaring one for Nadal. But it’s still interesting to note how objectivity can sometimes be thrown out of the window, even by the most balanced of observers, when it comes to talking about the greats of the game. And when it comes to Nadal, the observations can sound even more strongly wedded to unreasonably excessive expectations than usual. I don’t think any 11-time Grand Slam champion has ever been handed as much criticism or been handed as much ‘advice’ as Nadal has through his career.

Today, Nadal was almost continuously reprimanded for his unwillingness to stand closer to the baseline. He was berated for dropping the ball too short off the forehand wing, and for playing too many passive slices off the backhand wing. And at one point he was even admonished for merely spinning his serve into the box rather than go after it. But how much of all this was due to Nadal’s lack of urgency, and how much because of the peculiar circumstances surrounding Court Philippe Chatrier?

Fognini had come out of the blocks going for broke, pretty much the way Daniel Brands and Martin Klizan had in Nadal’s first two matches of the tournament; for much of the match he dictated points by taking the ball early and aiming for the lines. Add to that the fact that Nadal wasn’t having a particularly easy time finding the court with his offensive forehand (the strong winds swirling around the stadium may have had something to do with that), and it was only natural for the Spaniard to retreat a few metres behind the baseline and wait the storm out.

It may have seemed like a strangely passive match from the consensus greatest claycourter of all time, but from another, slightly less coloured perspective, it could also be viewed as an instance of shrewd game-management by a player not in the best form. Fognini played out of his skin, and out of his comfort zone, to put Nadal on the defensive today; he had to practically red-line his game just to make one set out of three competitive. And he lost that set too. What else could he have done, really, to bring about any other result out of the match?