Nadal’s strategic night in Melbourne

Melbourne in Australia last Sunday, January 30, 2022 was a day to be remembered for a long, long time by all lovers and players and pundits of the wonderful sport of tennis that many observers will gladly call and define as a sport for persons of very high intelligence. The night of last Sunday proved this to all doubting Tosans and Jolomis and their doubting minds. Indeed, tennis is a mirror of intelligence – which Rafael Nadal of Spain and Daniil Medvedev of Russia demonstrated in Melbourne in the hot night of Melbourne of last Sunday aforesaid. And Melbourne in and on that night revealed itself as a mirror, the true mirror to read the gem of tennis, to read our super real and super great gem of tennis. Everybody who watched live or un-live the final of the 2022 Australian Open between Daniil and Rafa will readily agree with what I am saying. To read and re-read, to interpret and re-interpret, to understand and to re-understand that final is to find oneself through the mirror or through the looking glass that Melbourne provided everyone of us that hot night of hot nights.

In my column of Friday December 6, 2019, I said as follows when I reflected on Nadal who ended the year as the best tennis player:

“Now the passing year is a glorious one indeed for the wondrous Rafael Nadal the mental giant of tennis who is also universally acknowledged as the greatest competitor of the sport. He is unarguably … tennis super personality and super hero who more than deserves to be described or to be talked about in superlatives, I mean in superlative terms. What he achieved this year is unbelievable given all the severe challenges he saw and battled through.

“These rigorous challenges manifested themselves in the forms of physical injuries and somber states of mind generated in him by the former. Yet Nadal, I once called here “Nadistical Nadal” after he bested Medvedev at the final of the US Open in a combat of nerves and gritty grit, did not deny himself the permission to end the year as tennis number one player, the fifth time in his super brilliant career. (How he came back from the dead to beat Medvedev at the Nitto ATP Finals in London a few days ago is a tennistic tale to be told and told again in the years to come.”

When I said what I said above in 2019 I did not see myself as a columnist, poet and writer who was engaging in any kind of absurd or obstinate illusion in the endeavour to compel your attention to see and accept Rafael Nadal the paragoge and paragon of paradisiacal tennis. Tennis as a mirror of delights which he offered us in Melbourne 2022 where he won his Grand Slam Number 21 and Australian Open Number 2 which he rightly and richly deserves as the first tennis male player to get the buoyantly buoyant Grand Slam Number 21 aforesaid surpasses his 2019 US Open and Nitto ATP Finals in London. In Melbourne, he met Medvedev, the same Medvedev, whom he out-gritted in 2019. This time he very, very ruggedly and very, very strategically distorted his play-mirror to re-constitute his approach and style to the discomfiture of his last victim, a worthy opponent and competitor who curiously but wrongly prepared himself not to fall before Nadal’s sleight and brains and grit. For seven months or so, due to injuries, as always in his tennis career and enterprise, Nadal was out of tennis circuits and courts. Medvedev was determined to cut Nadal to size with his own peculiar brand of sleek tennis. After all, he was higher (number two) in rank than Nadal who was lower (Number six) in rank and who had not appeared in tennis courts for a pretty-pretty long this season. At the end of the hot Melbourne night of reflections of the two finalists, Nadal’s distinct sleek-it style, aesthetics and athleticism prevailed.

Before the encounter, after Medvedev had dispatched Stefanos Tsitsipas in the second semi finals, the Russian confidently boasted that he would trounce the Spaniard in the final. On his own part Nadal the strategic guile-master and respecter of his opponents and foes alike did not say he would defeat Medvedev. He simply stated that he was going to the final to enjoy the sport of tennis whatever the outcome would be, a clever way to throw out of the mind of his questioner and of all those who tried looking at the looking glass of his interior regarding his unstated quest for Grand Slam 21 which he would be the first tennis player ever to achieve.

He did not care about breaking and creating records – he smilingly said with humility to hide his guile in that direction. In any case, he said, furthermore, that he was going to suffer to prove whatever something he was going to prove. What his speech depicted after he was done with the Italian Mateo Barettini, the big bomb server – whose play reminded me of Giovansi Batista Pergolesi (1710 – 30), Italian composer of operetta, that is comic or light-hearted opera which Nadal was an operant of throughout their four sets of tennis opera.

The similarly boastful Barettini who counted on his newly found experience to blow Nadal away obviously forgot that Nadal who blew him away at the 2019 US Open at the same semi finals or so stage is not a champion any self-willed or head-strong tennis upstart can subdue just by merely uttering words that will or would come to nothing in the end. In any case, he and Medvedev did not really know the true worth of Nadal, who outwitted them with his strategic guile and fiercely ferocious forays when it mattered most. Against his earlier opponents, for example, the Russian Karen Kachanov and the Canadian Denis Shapovalov, Nadal offered us tennis art that received from us our hugely huge gratulation.

But it was in the final that Nadal displayed his curiously curious guile that underscored his winning strategy and gigantic mentality that night. Before the final he had won at least the first two sets of all the opponents he played against. He made his opponents and spectators believe that he lost steam as the games and matches progressed. In the final against Medvedev he changed strategy that tactically gave the first set to Medvedev.

The Russian and many spectators and television viewers the world over thought or believed that the Spaniard’s ‘superstition’ of tennis victory especially after winning every first set was over. This thought or belief was underscored when he lost the second set narrowly (7-6), in my view, due to the offensive or criminal invasion of the court by presumably a pro-Medvedev supporter and fan at a crucial moment when Nadal was going to get a set tie of 1-1 (after his aforesaid strategic first set 2-6 fall).

But it was not over for the now second-time Australian Open champion. He won the next three sets (6-4; 6-4; 7-5) in incredulous fashion in the Melbourne hot night of a ding-dong battle. The US Open final in 2019 was replayed in reverse by the Russian (who is ten years younger than his Spanish super-master) and the Spaniard who has now beaten the Russian number one player four times in five duels.

Nadal never ever despair in pains, injuries and in defeats. Everything he wanted to show us about his tennis in the new season he tried to show us in his new mirror in Melbourne. The obviously tired Medvedev that night has learnt a new lesson from Nadal – who against the Russian’s strategic expectations was the one Nadal strategically tired out – physically, emotionally, aesthetically and otherwise.

Afejuku can be reached via 08055213059.