Rafael Nadal in 2013: an essay for a Sportstar book

[Earlier this year, during that strange and unfathomable time when sports tournaments were being played around the world in crowded arenas, a new book celebrating 40 years of Sportstar magazine was published. The format had 40 writers doing essays about a key year in the career of 40 sportspersons. My piece is about what I consider Rafa Nadal’s best year, 2013, and I was very excited when Sportstar asked me to write it. Having been an avid reader/hoarder of the magazine during my cricket-watching years more than two decades ago (especially when someone like Nirmal Shekar or R Mohan wrote a piece about one of my favourites), it feels warm and fuzzy to be IN a Sportstar for the first time. Not to mention that Sachin Tendulkar and I are, ahem, co-writers here — and rival co-writers to boot, since his contribution is about Roger Federer! Back in 1996, I could never have guessed that such a thing would come to pass.

At the same time, without getting into sordid details, problems cropped up with the book – among other things, the production was delayed and delayed again and then again, and the essay had to be reworked more than a year after I submitted it. Won’t focus on that here, though. Here is the piece]
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If you’re a sports lover who has pledged his troth to a player or team, you get used to moments of euphoria coexisting with moments of soul-crushing disappointment. Especially in a tense, oscillating match such as a Grand Slam final, where each hard-fought point, each rally ended with a decisive statement of intent, can make a big difference – not just in terms of who wins the current game, but for the psychological stakes involved.

In my most unforgettable sports memory, elation was preceded (for just a split second) by dismay, and the dismay was caused by a misunderstanding – the sort of misunderstanding that any long-time fan of Rafael Nadal might be prone to.

It’s that game, and that point at the end of the third set of the 2013 US Open final between Nadal and his most dangerous opponent ever, Novak Djokovic. Rafa has a break point that is also a set point. The rally stretches on, both men first playing cautiously, then speeding up the pace, turning defence to offence while sustaining a level of intensity that only their matches can produce. Djokovic’s forehand targets Rafa’s backhand, seems about to wrest control, but then Rafa gets the ball on his stronger side and lets one rip, smashing a forehand deep in the deuce court – so deep that, watching on a non-HD TV, I think the ball has gone just long; and meanwhile, out of the corner of my eye, I see Rafa looking like he has awkwardly fallen to his knee.

It’s all over, I tell myself in the time it takes these perceptions to coalesce: Djokovic will go on to win the game and then the set; and now it looks like Rafa’s famously fragile knee is in trouble, too; yet another injury in a career obstructed by them?

In another microsecond, I knew what had really happened. Rafa had caught the line with that blazing forehand; Djokovic, flailing, hadn’t been able to handle it; and Rafa, who had stumbled a little after hitting the shot, allowed himself to get down on that dodgy limb and celebrate with a mighty fist pump. Cut to his family and team in the stands, his girlfriend and dad exchanging goofy, disbelieving grins, the latter holding his head as if to stop a vein from bursting, like he had at the end of the 2008 Wimbledon final, like so many Nadal fans have done so, so often.

(Here is the point in question. The video embedded below has the full match.)




It’s hard to explain how much was at stake in that point, and what an incredible set this had been – a seesaw and a roller-coaster thrown into one. With the match tied, Rafa had fallen 0-2 behind in the third, and he came perilously close to going down two breaks; Djokovic was in one of his terrifying runs of form, reminiscent of 2011, when the brilliant Serb won six straight finals against Rafa. But Nadal held, broke back to make it three-all – and then went down 0-40 again before holding to reach 5-4. Then came that final game, with Rafa winning four straight points to steal the set. And Djokovic wilted, going down tamely in the fourth.

That game, that point, that moment, summarises what I think of as Rafa’s greatest season – which may be an unpopular view, because others will point to 2010, the only year in which he won three Slams, and still others to 2008 when he played that extraordinary Wimbledon final to dethrone Roger Federer and became world No. 1 for the first time after three straight years of tailing his older rival.

But 2013 is extra special for many reasons. In terms of the quality of competition he stared down, it was certainly superior to 2010 – there were far more triumphs against top-10 players, including three very satisfying wins against Djokovic. Two of those came at Slam level – the classic five-setter in the Roland Garros semifinals and the US Open final – but just as pleasing was the hard-fought win in the Montreal Masters semifinals, one of Rafa’s many high points during the most impressive non-clay run of his career: sweeping the three big autumn tournaments in North America – the Canada and Cincinnati Masters followed by the US Open. This is something that even hard-court masters like Federer and Djokovic haven’t done, and I rate it among the highest of Rafa’s achievements.

Then there is the fact that the 2013 season began with Rafa slowly, very slowly making his way back from one of his many demoralising injury layoffs. He didn’t play the Australian Open, opting to find form in small South American clay tournaments in February – losing the Vina del Mar final to world No. 73 Horacio Zeballos, then working his way up until he was confident enough, and ready enough, to win the Indian Wells Masters, beating Federer along the way and Juan Martín del Potro in the final. These were still baby steps, of course, on the road to the form that saw him beat the dominant Djokovic in vital matches later in the season.

So, 2013 for the win? I think so. With 2010, 2008, 2019, 2017 and his breakout year 2005 (first Slam, four Masters 1000 wins) coming a close second (in more or less that order).

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There are some obvious things to be said about the experience of being an obsessive Nadal fan, and some of them were on view if you saw the expressions on his team’s faces at the end of that third set. They were probably thinking exactly what I, and millions of other Nadal fans, have thought thousands of times over the years: How did he pull that off?

Having followed him match by match, tournament by tournament, since early 2006 – pacing up and down in front of the TV, pausing between points to refresh the chat page on whichever tennis website I’m logged into at the time – I know all the mood swings. You feel exhausted, almost like you have played the match yourself. You wish, at moments, that he were a more efficient, balletic player like Federer – so that, win or lose, at least the match would be over quickly and you could get back to what remains of your life. But you also appreciate what he means when he says, in interviews, that “suffering” through a match is often more important than the final result. And that he can take nothing for granted, not even against the lowest-ranked opponent.

And there are the deflating blows that come with realising that his body has let him down yet again, just when you felt he was on the cusp of a big achievement or was rounding into peak form – as happened when he had to withdraw after two rounds of the 2016 French Open.

But for a diffident fan like me, following Rafa has also been a matter of constantly being surprised in good ways: the goalposts for what is possible have shifted and shifted and shifted again. Back in 2006, I was surprised when he beat Federer in the French Open final (after barely squeaking through in the marathon Rome Masters final they played a few weeks earlier, and struggling through early rounds at the French) because I thought it was pre-destined that Federer would complete the Roger Slam. Then I was surprised when Rafa won his first non-clay major in 2008. (One persuasive narrative back then was that Djokovic, who had just won the Australian Open, was set to be the true all-court successor to Federer.) I was surprised when he won a hard-court major at the 2009 Australian Open (after playing a five-hour semifinal), surprised when he made a brilliant comeback in 2010 after a disappointing few injury-afflicted months, surprised when he overcame his 2011-2012 setbacks against Djokovic. 

I was astonished when he returned to No. 1 in 2017 after two strife-filled seasons where it had seemed clear that he was in a sportsman’s final twilight. And most recently, when he took back the number one spot from Djokovic near the end of the 2019 season (a season that had begun with the Serb conclusively overpowering Rafa in the Australian Open final) – and then rounded his year off by helping Spain win the Davis Cup in its new format, all the while celebrating and encouraging his countrymen like a teenager in the arena for the first time.

To describe sports fandom as a roller-coaster ride would be to imply that the object of that fandom is mercurial or inconsistent, burning bright but briefly. But with Rafa, the greatest and most improbable of his legacies – one that most observers would never have predicted a decade ago – involves longevity. In 2014, he became the first male player to have won at least one major in 10 consecutive years – an achievement largely determined by his mastery of the clay at Roland Garros, but no less impressive for that. As of December 2019, he has been in the top 10 for over 760 consecutive weeks, never falling out of that hallowed space since he first entered it in early 2005 – and is almost guaranteed to break Jimmy Connors’s record of 787 weeks.

This wasn’t supposed to happen! These are achievements one expects from the more “efficient” great players, like Federer or Djokovic or Pete Sampras.

Given how accustomed Rafa’s fans are to “suffering” with him, it feels almost poetically appropriate that when I first began putting together notes for this piece, Nadal was in the midst of another injury-related setback. With Djokovic having made his own comeback, and generally appearing less prone to recurring injuries, who would bet on Rafa continuing to be dominant in his mid-thirties?

But after everything that has happened from 2005 on, who could bet against it? For many of us, watching Rafa make repeated comebacks and play tireless defence-to-offence against a sportsman’s biggest nemesis, Father Time, has been more fulfilling than watching all those close matches against his biggest flesh-and-blood rivals. His playing style won’t let him continue for more than another three or four seasons, some commenters (including some of us gloomy fans) were saying when he was still a teen. Look how that turned out.

How to obsess over a tennis player (even when he doesn't like your dog)

[Did this personal essay for Indian Quarterly. It is about my Rafa Nadal fandom, but it is also about my life with dogs -- Foxie especially -- and how the two things intersected]

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It was sometime in 2010 that I learnt for the first time that Rafa Nadal didn’t like dogs.

“I don’t trust their intentions,” my favourite sportsman was quoted as saying in a piece on a tennis website; I don’t remember if the original interview was in English, but if so I can imagine Rafa saying the words with a concentrated frown, in a faltering, sing-song tone.

For a while I felt unsettled, almost betrayed. Over the previous two years, much of my life had centred around my canine child Foxie. Though I had been an “animal lover” in a vague, generalised sense since childhood, Foxie’s arrival came at a time when I had recently begun working from home, therefore was around her far more than most pet-owners (or pet-parents) are. In the process I had learnt new and frightening things about my capacity for maternal love and protectiveness. (And yes, it was maternal, not paternal.)

Importantly, through the experience of daily walks with Fox in a colony where the majority of residents didn’t like dogs, or were actively hostile, I had developed a pronounced wariness about non-dog people. Passive-aggressive confrontations became routine, and I stopped caring about dull platitudes such as “respect your elders” – if an old curmudgeon from the local RWA came and said something I thought problematic, I would give back more than I got.

And now, here was the realisation that if Rafa Nadal had been living in my neighbourhood, he would be one of those sub-humans shaking a fist at Fox from a distance, or just scowling in the familiar way.

At around the same time, perhaps while reading the same piece, I learnt that Rafa’s rival Novak Djokovic – already a very dangerous opponent, soon to become our greatest nemesis – had a dog, loved it like a child, and even took it on tour with him.

Given how central this subject was to my life, it would have made sense if my feelings towards Rafa had cooled off a bit and I had discovered a newfound regard, perhaps even personal fandom, for Djokovic.

But that would be assuming our reptile brain works in predictable, structured ways, and that sports fandom has a rational foundation. Naturally, nothing of the sort happened. The next season, as Djokovic made his first serious run towards all-time greatness, raising his game to a fearsome new level and beating Rafa in six finals, including Wimbledon and the US Open, I suffered through each of those matches. During the worst of those shellackings, I would have considered tossing Djokovic’s pet-child into heavy traffic just so he would tear after it, emitting Balkan shrieks, and perhaps intercept a speeding truck.

One obvious analogy would be with an old and deep friendship I had formed long before I developed strong feelings about dogs (or politics, or culture, or whatever). In such cases, even if you discover that you and your long-time friend have serious differences on issues that have become very close to your heart (the Modi regime, the worth of popular cinema or literature), it doesn’t matter much because the friendship predated your engagement with those things. Forming new friendships is of course much trickier. I sometimes wonder how it would have gone if my relationship with Fox had begun before my first viewing of Rafa Nadal’s tennis (and if I had learnt about his dog-dislike much earlier).

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How did I become a Nadal fan in the first place, and how did this grow into a consuming obsession that had me following tennis round the year, tournament by tournament, and having intense and prolonged conversations on tennis messageboards – in some weeks, spending more time on this than I did on any other activity, neglecting my own deadlines in the process? Or rushing off, mid-vacation in Scotland in 2007, to find an internet café where I could check the result of a Barcelona Open match?

Among the easily listed factors: I loved that powerful forehand and the unusual angles it created. I had never watched tennis closely enough to register the nuances of a left-hander’s play before, and I took special joy in watching Rafa’s down-the-line forehand curving into the court, or the way he pounded away at Federer’s backhand. To a fan who, at that point, had a simplistic understanding of the sport, those rallies made it seem like Rafa was the “stronger” (in every sense of the word) player – and briefly I bought into the idea that Federer was an overrated fraud who had collected a haul of trophies against unworthy opposition but was now finally having to deal with a superior opponent. I would soon realise that this was just as silly as the opposite view – held by many Federer fans – that Rafa was a bouncing board who could do nothing but retrieve the ball endlessly until his (more gifted, more deserving) opponent made a mistake.

Rafa’s emergence also coincided with a phase when I found sporting dominance tedious. This hadn’t always been the case – I had adored the Australian Test teams of the 1990s and early 2000s, for instance – but it was the case now, as Federer went for his fourth straight Slam at the 2006 French Open. After the Swiss won the opening set of the final 6-1, I was both surprised and relieved that Rafa (who had weathered a five-hour epic against Paul-Henri Mathieu earlier in the week) came back to win the match. And yet, even after he won, it was possible to see him as an underdog: the on-court translator misinterpreted part of his speech, drawing boos; the crowd had clearly wanted to see the much-adored Federer complete the “Roger Slam”; and at this stage in their rivalry, Federer himself was sometimes dismissive of Rafa’s “one-dimensional” game (this would change in the next couple of years, but I know many Rafa fans who have cherished that wound and continue to retaliate by labelling Federer ungracious).

That was the first of dozens of times that I watched a Rafa final from beginning to end. I enjoyed the kinetic energy, the fist-pumping. But also, I sensed that these exuberant celebrations didn’t come from a smug feeling of superiority or privilege, or wanting to intimidate the opponent; they came from something like the opposite – finding it hard to believe that one had pulled off this or that shot, won this or that match.

On my blog and on tennis websites, I used to have arguments, especially in the early years, with people who, having only watched Rafa from a distance, had decided that he was an uncouth, muscular brute – “not a very nice person”, as one delicate soul said. But how strange to think that this muscular brute is also the one major player in memory who has never been seen smashing a racquet. (In fact, that’s one thing I don’t relate to about Rafa. Being controlled and self-possessed, not showing extreme emotions in moments of crisis – yes, that’s okay. But never losing your temper enough to break something violently? No, I don’t get that.)

I have also had arguments, with those who don’t like Rafa’s game or personality, about his alleged “sandbagging” – defined as wilfully lowering expectations for himself even when he is about to play a much lower-ranked opponent in the first round of a tournament. (“Gonna be a tough match, no? Have to play my best.”) I never saw this as dishonesty or false humility: I thought I understood it. In my school days, I was often depressed and hangdog-like after an exam, convinced I had done poorly – and my friends would get very annoyed when I subsequently got high marks. But this was how I really felt at the time. It may have been chronic pessimism, or a subconscious fear of letting oneself down (it’s also possible my friends were so overconfident that there was always likely to be this sort of mismatch between our expectations and our results).

This attitude is worlds removed from the confidence always exuded by Federer (which some Rafa fans perceived as arrogance) – and later by Djokovic, who recently said in a press interview that he has his eye on Federer’s world record number of weeks at Number 1. It’s hard to imagine Rafa ever giving voice to such an ambition. He may in his own way be just as concerned with legacy, but given his personality, his uncle Toni’s conditioning and his injury history, there is also a tendency to be cautiously grateful for every new achievement or milestone. I believe him when he says things like “I have already achieved far more than I expected to.” But again, the reptile brain is a complex thing, and even such a statement, made truthfully, can be compatible with feelings of crushing disappointment when one fails to win an important match or loses seven matches in a row against a major rival.

In his premature autobiography, published in 2010, Rafa mentioned that he sometimes marvelled that he had ever beaten players like Federer or Djokovic in big matches. When Djokovic began mastering him in the following season, it felt almost like a prophecy fulfilled; and when Rafa made comebacks in 2012 and 2013 to win crucial matches against the Serb, I felt a sense of astonishment again. Being constantly surprised has been a big part of Rafa fandom for me, because I see him as an over-achiever on non-clay surfaces. Without buying into simplistic narratives about Federer being the “pure talent” and Rafa being the “great fighter” (that’s a grossly incomplete assessment of both men’s strengths), it’s true that much of Rafa’s finest work has been in come-from-behind positions: whether at the micro-level of turning a match around or the macro-level of trailing Federer for three years at the number 2 spot before finally taking the top spot with the 2008 Wimbledon win (a match where he had the difficult task of serving second in the deciding set).

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There are other small details – things one identifies with, which have accumulated over the years. I liked the fact that Rafa (and Uncle Toni) seem to be matter-of-factly atheist (or agnostic), compared to all those players who look skyward and kiss the crosses around their necks every time something good happens for them – as if God had nothing better to do than to monitor their win-loss records.

Speaking of Gods though, how does a sportsman become a sort of personal deity (even for an atheist) – so that his achievements and failures, temporarily at least, can overshadow the important things that are going on in one's own life? I have no answer to that question, but I have first-hand experience of it. There’s another connection between my Nadal fandom and my Foxie-centred life, a bittersweet reminder of how sporting passion can concentrate and revitalise the senses.

Early in Paul Auster’s The Book of Illusions, the narrator-protagonist David Zimmer – having lost his family in a plane crash, and spent weeks in a haze of numbing grief  – recalls the first time in ages that he responded to external stimuli: a chance viewing of an old silent comedy on TV. “It made me laugh. That might not sound important, but it was the first time I had laughed at anything since June, and when I felt that unexpected spasm rise up through my chest and begin to rattle around in my lungs, I understood that I hadn’t hit bottom yet […] I hadn’t walled myself off from the world so thoroughly that nothing could get in anymore.”

My version of this story doesn’t involve laughter, or positive emotional stimulation, but operates along the same principles. On June 16, 2012, I lost Foxie: aged just four, she went suddenly on the vet’s table after nearly two years of struggling with a chronic digestive condition, but also at a time when it seemed her condition was stabilising – which means the end was unexpected, and devastating. It would change everything in important ways for a long time: I could no longer meet or speak with friends who didn’t understand what a big deal this was for me; on one occasion, when someone made a flippant remark, I came dangerously close to asking how they might feel if something very specific and very nasty happened to their (human) child. In the immediate aftermath of her going, I dreaded going to bed at night since I would lie awake, plagued by images of her final moments, aching to be able to cuddle her again. I barely realised when sleep came, if it did.

And then one night, around 12 days later, for the very first time, I went to bed with only around 60 percent of my mind occupied by Foxie-thoughts. The remaining 40 percent was in faraway England, where I had just watched Rafa lose his 2nd round Wimbledon match to the 100th-ranked Lukas Rosol.

The next few months would be a poor time for a Nadal fan, as he struggled with his latest round of injuries, missed two Slams, and returned to competitive play only in February 2013. But this also gave me a chance to distract myself by having particularly impassioned tennis-board conversations (mainly with Nadal-haters who were convinced that he was no longer relevant). Later, as he worked his way back up – eventually winning the French Open and the US Open, memorably beating Djokovic in both, sweeping the American hard-court tournaments in August-September and finishing the year as number one – watching his matches was a big part of my healing process. In April 2013, just as Rafa had announced his true return by winning Indian Wells and starting to dominate the clay season, I found myself revitalised enough to think seriously about a book project (having assured myself over the previous few years that I would never work on a book again) and write a pitch to a publisher.

Years later, another Rafa resurgence – an even more unanticipated one, which took place in his thirties in 2017 – would help me as I dealt with another tough personal situation, my mother’s terminal cancer. Chemotherapy sessions in September that year coincided with his US Open run. It kept my senses from being numbed, reminded me that there were still things going on in the outside world that I could engage with and care about.

Being a Rafa fan became, for me, as silent comedy was for Zimmer, a way back into life.
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[Here's another personal essay I did for Indian Quarterly, about my mother's cancer diagnosis and what followed]

Nadal as the anti-Hitchcock hero (and other thoughts on tennis and suspense)

[Did this piece for Mint Lounge’s tennis special]

The final leg of Alfred Hitchcock’s 1951 film Strangers on a Train has the narrative cross-cutting between two actions, until they converge in an exciting fight scene atop a carousel. In the first of these actions, the suave psychopath Bruno Anthony leaves his house to travel to a fairground where he wants to drop off a cigarette lighter. His purpose in doing this is to incriminate the story’s hero, Guy Haines, in a murder that Bruno has committed. The lighter belongs to Guy and has two tennis racquets embossed on it.

While this is happening, Guy – a tennis star with political ambitions – is playing an important match, but also knows that he must get off the court, and out of the stadium, in time to intercept Bruno and save himself; at the changeover between games, he looks tensely at the courtside clock, and we count the minutes with him.

As the sequence progresses, the cutting between the two narratives becomes increasingly urgent (and visually symbolic: at one point, Bruno must retrieve the lighter from a storm drain it has fallen into, his fingers slipping down ever further into the darkness; meanwhile, Guy’s racquet points sun-ward as he makes overhead shots). There is a hint of character development too. Guy has been a limp-wristed sort so far, not a strong, assertive hero (Farley Granger, who plays the part, had a similarly passive role in Hitchcock’s Rope), but now, facing crisis, he doesn’t have the option of playing the waiting game: he has to speed it up, move out of his comfort zone, take risks.

I have sometimes thought of that match while watching the theatre of men’s tennis over the past decade and a bit: a period that saw the riveting Roger Federer-Rafael Nadal rivalry followed by the ascent to greatness of one-time “third wheel” Novak Djokovic, and the continued doggedness of Andy Murray, perpetual bridesmaid in Grand Slam finals, who doesn’t get enough credit for his achievements in such a high-octane era. As a Nadal obsessive who has a great deal of respect for all those other players, I feel like playing devil’s advocate and wondering: what if Guy Haines was Federer, and what if the man he was playing in that scene was Rafa Nadal? Would the hero ever have got off that court? Would Hitchcock’s film have had a chance to end, much less reach its spectacular climax?

We saw a version of this story emerge in the last decade, when Federer fans had reason to view Nadal as the moustache-twirling cinematic “heavy”, always impeding their hero’s progress. Circa 2005, here is Roger, an efficient, confident, attacking player, accustomed to swanning his way through matches and finishing in time to toss out bon mots at the press conference. After which he can go eat a five-course meal on a glacier, or don a cape and rescue Sherlock Holmes at the Reichenbach Falls, or whatever it is Swiss superheroes do. Most of his opponents, much less skilled, play the game on his terms. But now the script changes. Along comes this Nadal, this Spaniard in the works, with his two-handed backhand and almost robotic ball-retrieving, grunting and fist-pumping as if every point isn’t just a point to be quickly won or lost, it is a battle for his very soul. Not only does he make you play endless rallies, he also takes his sweet time between them. (“He towels off after EVERY POINT, even after his opponent has double-faulted!” a friend of mine, no Rafa fan, once wailed. Not so far from the truth.)

In Strangers on a Train, the tennis match is a pit-stop on the road to something much more important – the real game with the highest stakes lies ahead, in the fairground confrontation. (In an impeccably crafted film, those tennis scenes are casually shot by Hitchcock’s standards.) For Nadal, on the other hand, the court itself is the carnival. There have been times, watching some of his longest matches (the epic 2012 Australian Open final and the grueling Madrid Masters semifinal of 2009, both against Djokovic, come to mind), when I have felt that even if he lost, the thrill lay in just being part of something surreal and never-ending.

Those words could describe another cinematic tennis match, from a very different sort of film. Michelangelo Antonioni’s 1966 Blow Up is one of those cool, avant-garde European movies that initially pretend to be narrative-driven (this one even pretends to be an exciting mystery), before yielding to abstract, enigmatic commentary on modern life, hedonism and flawed perceptions. In its closing scene, the protagonist Thomas watches a group of mimes “play” a tennis match with an invisible ball. At first bemused, he eventually succumbs to the conceit: his eyes move back and forth as if he is watching a real match.

You might call this match existential tennis, where the purpose isn’t to get a result but to go through the same motions over and over. And that is how some exasperated Federer fans describe not just Nadal’s playing style, but also most of the baseline-rally-dominated matches that Djokovic and Murray have played in recent years. For those purists, this is the un-beautiful game, so repetitive and tedious that their eyes glaze over and they can barely see the ball after a point.

Can we propose this binary then: that Federer was like the dashing hero of a Hitchcock thriller – a throwback to the crisper tennis of a past era, before surfaces around the world were slowed down – while Nadal, grinding away for hours, was the lead in a languorously paced film? Well, yes, if you have a very narrow view of what exciting tennis (or stirring cinema) should be. But here’s a caveat. Don’t try telling me that being a Nadal fan doesn’t involve high suspense – I have 11 years’ worth of chewed fingernails and accumulated grey hair to counter that thought.

Some of this suspense has come in great matches: such as the heart-stopping moment during the 2008 Wimbledon final when Nadal – with the match on his racquet in the fourth-set tiebreak – temporarily melted into a puddle of nerves; or the extraordinary see-saw of the third set of the 2013 US Open final, which Rafa somehow stole from under Djokovic’s nose after being nearly a double-break down. However, the bulk of the suspense has been off-court, in the constant second-guessing about his many injuries: how long before his knee, or shoulder, or back, gives way this time? How much is his team disclosing to the outside world? Can he make it through another round after that exhausting last match? When is a comeback likely to occur, and how effective will it be?

Given all this drama, watching Rafa win quickly can feel anti-climactic, even portentous. I was astonished a few weeks ago when I tuned in to his first-round match at the French Open to find that, in only sixty-five minutes of play, he was up 6-1, 6-1, 3-0 against an admittedly low-ranked opponent. It should have been thrilling, but it felt like the usual order of things had been mangled – it was too good to be true. A few days later, just as talk had begun about Rafa being in contention to win his tenth French Open, he pulled out of the tournament with a wrist injury.

Hitchcock once made a distinction between surprise (a sudden explosion that a viewer couldn’t possibly have anticipated) and its more effective cousin, suspense (we know there is a bomb under the table, but we don’t know when, or if, it will go off). For casual tennis watchers, Nadal’s pullout came as a blindsiding surprise. For perpetually jittery, stressed-out fans like yours truly who follow every practice-session report and press conference, it was more like the newest twist in a decade-long suspense series. Following him over the years has been – depending on the context – like watching an “arty” film full of long pauses and silences; or like watching a fast-paced thriller, waiting with bated breath for the moment where the roundabout careens out of control. That’s a good, varied menu if you’re a movie buff, and I’m not complaining.

[Some earlier posts on Rafa Nadal/tennis are here]

Rafa Nadal probably won't win the French Open this year, but so what?

[Did this for the Daily O]

Pilgrimages aren’t my thing (to put it mildly), but early last year I went for one in, of all places, a quiet nook of Paris. The venue was the Roland Garros stadium where the French Open, one of tennis’s four Slams or majors, begins each May. I was visiting in March, two months before the start of the 2014 tournament, and not the best time for a guided tour: the players’ locker rooms were being renovated and the main arena, the famous Court Philippe Chatrier, looked a shadow of its elegant self – none of that gorgeous, shimmering red clay I had been viewing for years on television, just craters in the ground and plenty of dull, regular-coloured mud that I could easily have seen back home in Delhi just by looking out my balcony, thank you very much.

And yet, the visit was totally worth it.

This was the motivation for it: since 2006 I have been a huge fan of Rafael Nadal, who had (as of early last year) won this most prestigious of clay-court events a record eight times. Watching Rafa slide his way to title after title during this part of the tennis season has been a highlight of my sports-watching summer for years. Having resigned myself to never seeing him play at Roland Garros in person, I felt I should at least go and do some good-old-fashioned matha tekna at the grounds while he was still their reigning champion. Sit on the press-conference chair. Examine the players’ signatures on the wall. And so on.

It also seemed urgent, because how much longer could the reign last? Rafa’s great rival Novak Djokovic needed only the French Open to complete his own haul of major trophies, and he had plenty of support and goodwill to supplement his all-round game. Every one of the Roland Garros staff I spoke to during my time there, including the guide, wanted Novak to win in June; they were fed up of Rafa’s dominance.

When the 2014 tournament began, I was back in Delhi, of course, and even more convinced that the RG darshan had happened not a moment too soon. Rafa had had a mediocre clay season (by his standards), losing early in tournaments he had dominated for years and then unconvincingly winning the Madrid Masters final when his opponent Kei Nishikori was undone by a back injury. Then, in Rome, in the last tournament before the French Open, Rafa lost the final to Djokovic. The Ultimate Dethronement seemed ordained.

It wasn’t. Two weeks later, sitting in the home of a friend (who, as a Roger Federer devotee, has been affably ruing Nadal’s very existence for years), I watched Rafa win a tense French Open final for his ninth title. (That’s 50 percent more than the legendary Bjorn Borg, who was once considered the last word on this surface.) “Well, there you go,” said my long-suffering friend, “There was only ever going to be one result. Rinse and repeat. This was boringly predictable.”

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Philippe Chatrier in March 2014, looking none too glamorous
- and a little bit like Rafa's future

But this year even he will probably concede that Rafa isn’t the tournament favourite. Having struggled throughout 2015 – with a match record that is easily his poorest since 2004 – and not having won a title during the European clay season, it seems very likely that a 10th RG is not on the cards. Djokovic is looking stronger than last year too, and the draw, announced yesterday, has him and Rafa in the same quarter, tantalising and dismaying tennis fans in equal measure.

I haven’t had much time to worry though, since I’ve been too busy giggling at some of the narratives being propagated on sports messageboards and media, and endorsed both by Nadal-haters who are drunk on Schadenfreude AND by Nadal fans who think he is a machine that will go on winning till the end of time. Here are just three of those narratives, which are closely linked to each other:

– Rafa’s game has been figured out by the other players; he is losing more often because he no longer has the “locker-room aura”, and more players “believe” they can beat him,

– So he needs to “evolve” with the changes in the sport, by retooling his own game,

– He has plenty of time to do this because he is only 28 and should have lots of time left as a top player.

That second statement is arguably the funniest: I don’t know any player who has adjusted and evolved his game more often than Rafa has. But the thing is, he has done this many times over the course of a decade – and sports fans’ memories tend to be very short-lived.

It certainly isn’t the case that players have conveniently started figuring Rafa out only now. Opponents who could execute a certain sort of game well HAD been “figuring him out” as early as 2006 (go back and look at his matches against players like James Blake, David Nalbandian, Nikolay Davydenko and Tomas Berdych). He came right back, found new ways to face the challenges posed by different conditions, surfaces and opponents. In the process, he achieved things that many of his fans didn’t expect him to achieve. My own Nadal fandom has been about being pleasantly surprised time and again: by the 2008 Wimbledon win over Federer; the career Slam with a US Open final win over Djokovic (who is unquestionably the better hard-court player overall); the hugely successful comeback in 2013; and many others triumphs over the years.

But of course, if you only started watching tennis (or acquired the wondrous gift of consciousness) in the past two years, you would think he has plenty of adapting and learning still to do; that he is obliged to not just keep the rampaging Djokovic (whom he has already beaten six times at Roland Garros) at bay forever, but also hold off any other contenders who may emerge in the future. Well, sport doesn’t work that way. There is an age and decline factor at play here.

Which brings me to that “He is only 28”. (Twenty-nine next month, actually: his birthday is on the very day that potential quarter-final against Djokovic is scheduled!) But as Dharmendra growled in Johnny Gaddaar, “It’s not the age. It’s the MILEage.”

When Rafa first began winning big, in 2005, critics looked at his arduous, physical game and said “It can’t last. No longevity there.” A judgement that became more confident when the first of his many injury-related breaks occurred.

What actually happened since then? Despite the timeouts, he has played close to 900 matches for an overall win-loss percentage that is still marginally the highest in the men’s game. He has spent nearly 10 full seasons ranked in the top 4, most of those in the top 2. And he holds the record for most consecutive Slam-winning seasons (10). All this from someone who was never supposed to have a long career!

So here’s a tip, based not just on defensive Nadal fandom but also on knowledge of tennis history (and the oldest rule of sport and life, that nothing lasts forever): forget that youthful-seeming “28”. Instead watch Rafa on clay this fortnight, or however much of the fortnight he survives – and then, regardless of what happens, whether he loses in the quarter-final to Djokovic, or in the first round to someone you never heard of, or something in between, ignore the shrieking, sensationalist, eyeball-seeking newspaper headlines and the gloating comments on messageboards and remember this: the amazing thing, the unthinkable thing isn’t the loss but the fact that he won so much and for so long.

In a recent piece, the generally excellent Rohit Brijnath wrote, somewhat over-dramatically, that “the French Open is all that Rafa has got left”. That may be true in the short term and on the small scale (the scale at which too many narrative-seeking journalists and attention-deficient fans operate). In the big picture though, he has one of the most exciting, inspiring careers the sport has seen, and no one is taking that away from him. Not Djokovic, and not even paranoid fans who go on stadium pilgrimages because they don’t expect to see their favourite’s name on the winner’s roster a few months later.

[More fanboy pieces about Rafa here and here and here]

Meeting two frosty women and a tennis stadium in Paris

Some people go to Paris to see the Louvre, the Orsay, the Latin Quarter or the Eiffel Tower. I scoff at these plebs. My personal Mecca and Medina and Vaishno Devi and what have you converged at two of the city's less touristy venues. First, the Cinémathèque Française museum, and a darshan of two women who have haunted my dreams since my early teens.

Forget the Mona Lisa – the real enigmatic Parisian lady is the robot from Metropolis. Behold these photos wherein two men, 90 years apart, try to exercise patriarchal control over Maria, yet she remains imperturbable and sphinx-like.

From sphinx to embalmed mummy... meet Mrs Bates, looking just a little less sinister than she did in Norman's basement.

Here is my masterful impression of Anthony Perkins in the film’s penultimate shot.

Not sure what I’m doing here, but then we all go a little mad sometimes. Haven’t you?

(About the picture quality...the room was dark and these were taken surreptitiously. I may have broken some French law.)

To a sunnier place now, and the second leg of my pilgrimage was the Roland Garros stadium, home of the French Open where Rafa Nadal has reigned for eight of the past nine years. (That reign may well end in two months given Djokovic’s current form, but no matter.) Here I am in the room where the champion has his post-match press conference.

(Beneath that sweater and coat is a left arm to rival this one here. You’ll have to take my word for it.)

Near the locker rooms, a wall with some of the players’ signatures (two Federers and one Nadal included).

Outside the legendary Court Philippe Chatrier. Unfortunately they were in the process of preparing the ground for this year’s tournament, so I didn’t get to see any red clay, just a few craters.

And finally, being swatted by Suzanne Lenglen near the court named in her honour.

If Miss Lenglen’s pose reminds you of Mrs Bates with her knife, welcome to my inner world.

Rafa the low-born (tennis at Kurukshetra)

Had to share this. I wrote a piece for the magazine Indian Quarterly recently, about a new crop of epic retellings being done in popular genres such as young romance and the underworld thriller. The piece – which centred on two new books about Karna, one of my childhood literary heroes – ended with a jokey line about how, if I ever did a Mahabharata-retelling myself, I would merge my personal obsessions and present the Kurukshetra war as a series of Grand Slam tennis matches: 128 warriors, falling by the wayside one by one (over 18 days, or over a fortnight), all of it leading up to a grand finale - the decisive Arjuna-Karna battle, cast as a meeting between Roger Federer and my favourite sportsperson Rafael Nadal.

It was a throwaway reference, not central to the piece in any way, so imagine my surprise when I saw a PDF of the story and found that the illustration done for it brought together Karna and Rafa (dressed in Wimbledon whites, including the sleeveless kavacha he wore until a few years ago) in one surreal, bow-and-bandana juxtaposition. I didn't have anything to do with planning the image, so this was most fortuitous, and I must thank the illustrator Salil Sojwal. Here’s the picture:

Illustration: SALIL SOJWAL

Of course, one is now tempted to make Nadal: Federer = Karna: Arjuna analogies, based on nothing more concrete than the facile perceptions we form of sportspeople. Thus, Roger as the privileged prince and favoured son, all grace and artistry, seemingly born to conquer the world, his destiny pre-written in stone; and Rafa as the dark cloud on his horizon, the upstart shaking up the fraternity with his unconventional style of play and his apparently uncouth mien (which conceals a sweet but defensive nature). Roger pirouetting his way across tennis courts with a sense of entitlement, while Rafa plays catch-up, struggling with the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune: chronic injuries, a style of play that doesn’t meet the aesthetic demands of people who want their tennis to be like ballet, and an inability to make himself properly understood – which in one famous case after the 2006 French Open led to public booing because he had been mistranslated. (“Chale jao, suta-putra,” yells the Hastinapura crowd.)

I could go on, but I won’t. Instead here are two photos of cho-chweet bonding between rivals. The first is from the great years of the Roger-Rafa bromance (more on that in this post); the second is from a recent episode of the Star Plus Mahabharat where Karna helps Arjuna (disguised here as a brahmin) lift a chariot wheel out of the mud (!!). Can't see the resemblance? Either there is no poetry in your soul, or you have better things to do with your time.

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"VAMOS!!!"

13 and 6 (some thoughts after Rafael Nadal’s US Open win)

[Statutory warning: indulging myself with a tennis post – the sort I would happily write two or three times each week, if I had the time and was doing it professionally. Did a version of this for Business Standard Weekend. Ignore if you haven’t followed men’s tennis in the past decade]

One hazard of being both a fixated tennis-watcher and innately interested in numbers is that odd combinations of match scores and player statistics swirl about in your head, keeping you awake nights. For example: in my long, eventful fandom of Rafael Nadal, there have been two key occasions – both on the eve of a Slam final – when I have dwelled upon the formula “12 versus 6”, expecting it to become “12-7” the next day but secretly hoping it would be “13-6”. In both cases, the hope was pleasingly and unexpectedly realised.

1 ) nearly five years ago, before the 2009 Australian Open final between Rafa and his great rival Roger Federer, the head-to-head between the two players was 12-6 in Rafa’s favour. I’m not one of those Nadal fans who point to the lopsided H2H as evidence that Rafa is “better” than Roger, but I admit to getting some satisfaction from it, thinking of it as part of his overall legacy. And in January 2009, I had resigned myself to Federer winning that final. The counter in my head had already ticked over: “The head-to-head is going to be 12-7 now,” I told myself. “C’est la vie.” Well, as any tennis follower knows, that didn’t happen. 13-6 happened instead.

2 ) last weekend, when Nadal and his greatest current rival, Novak Djokovic, won their US Open semi-finals and prepared to play each other for the trophy, a different sort of head-to-head comparison came into play. Nadal had 12 Slam titles, Djokovic had 6. Which meant that at the end of the match, the comparative Slam-count would be either 13-6 or 12-7. Midway through the match, I was convinced Djokovic had the thing wrapped up. Always dangerous against Rafa, he had raised shot execution to the level of intent, and some of the rallies were resembling highlight reels from their meetings in 2011, when Djokovic beat Nadal six straight times. But again, Nadal found a way and 13-6 it was.

Yes, this coincidence of numbers is an obscure thing to go on about, but I'm using it to make a couple of points. First, these matches were against Nadal's most important opponents, the two other top male players of the past decade (but more on that later). Second, it could be argued that he had no business winning either of those matches. Two days before that Australian Open final against Federer, he had played an intense, debilitating five-hour semi-final against Fernando Verdasco, and he would later write in his memoir that he never thought he would recover in time for the final. (I believe him: in Chennai the year earlier, Nadal played a marathon three-set semi against Carlos Moya, and then, depleted, mustered just one game in the final the next day.) Meanwhile, Federer had been stunningly imperious – even by his own standards – in his quarter-final and semi-final, and had had an extra day’s rest. Even given the nature of the match-up, which favoured Rafa, there was no reason to think he could win his very first hard-court Slam final against one of the finest hard-court players of all time.

Watching him pull that off – and then watching him, earlier this week, finding a way to meet Djokovic’s flashes of un-playable-ness with his own solidity and counter-aggression – have been just two in a long line of happy surprises that have come with being a longtime Nadal follower.

Constantly being surprised – that is what Rafa fandom has been like, at least for a diffident, forever-hoping-for-the-worst fan like me. The goal-posts for what is possible, what can realistically be achieved, have kept changing. Back in 2006, I was surprised when he beat Federer at the French Open final (it was the first time Rampaging Roger had ever lost a title match at a Slam) because I thought it was pre-destined that Federer would complete his Career Slam that year. Then I was surprised when Rafa won his first major off clay, at the historic 2008 Wimbledon final.

I was surprised when he won a hard-court major, surprised when he made a brilliant comeback in 2010, following a disappointing few months affected by injury. And now, in the second half of his career, at a point where he should rightly be starting his decline (a player who first became a Slam-winner nine seasons ago can usually be expected to be past his peak), I have been astonished both by his comeback this year (10 titles in 13 tournament appearances, a 17-1 record against top 10 players) after another injury break, and by the fact that he has been able to win important hard-court matches against Djokovic.

But then Nadal often seems surprised by himself too: as he said of Djokovic after the USO final, “Sometimes I really don’t know how I am able to beat him.” I have written elsewhere about the sandbagging – or the public lowering of expectations – that he is often accused of (“I have to play my very best to have a chance to win,” he often says in interviews before facing an opponent ranked several dozen spots below him). It’s an attitude I personally relate to, but more to the point, it is an understandable one given the many physical struggles he has had - notably with congenital foot and knee issues - over his career, and the fact that he has frequently had to play catch-up on surfaces other than his favourite clay.

Djokovic has long been an important part of this story. In 2008, when he first emerged as an A-plus-level player, seriously challenging Rafa’s hold on the number 2 spot behind Federer, I read a long, thoughtful comment on a tennis website suggesting that Rafa was destined to be a brief interlude between the Federer Era and the Djokovic Era, a clay-court champ whose short career would be sandwiched between those of two all-time greats of the sport; at best, perhaps, he would achieve something akin to Lleyton Hewitt, who honourably commandeered the ATP fort for a season and a half between Pete Sampras’s decline and Federer’s rise. And this view seemed reasonable enough: Nadal hadn’t won a Slam off clay yet, and Djokovic (who Pete Bodo had described as “the perfect player” as early as 2007) seemed a more complete, all-round, all-surface champion.

What has actually transpired over the years is – again from the viewpoint of a perpetually pessimistic fan – quite wondrous. Nadal has continued to be not merely relevant but often dominant in his individual rivalries against Federer and Djokovic, weathering storms when each of these players were in prime, world-conquering form. And while being a game-spoiler for both of them to varying degrees (they would both have had even more impressive records if the Spaniard had not existed), he has also presented them with new challenges and made this entire tennis era seem a little more charged up and intriguing than it may otherwise have been. As a sandbagging fan, I’m only just starting to deal with the idea that there might actually have been such a thing as the Rafael Nadal Era, and that we may have been in it for the past six or seven years (and this is said with no disrespect to Federer – who I still regard the better overall player – or to Djokovic). 


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About something more specific: there has been some talk recently about Nadal’s shift to a more attacking style of play on hard courts, a style tailored to make his game more efficient and help protect creaky limbs on a playing surface he has never been particularly fond of. This change, I think, is also showing in his demeanor on court, in displays of relaxedness that are different from the way he normally is in the heat of competition.

For instance, in the fourth set of the USO final, when Rafa was up 3-1, serving at 30-15, he sent down a first serve that was called out, then decided to challenge the call (asking for a replay on the Hawkeye system) – but he was simultaneously shrugging to himself and getting back into his serving position as if to say “I know it probably was wide, but might as well check.” This casualness was atypical, I thought. After all, the match was by no means over. He was only one break up, against a dangerous, unpredictable player famous for making comebacks; there had already been breaks of serve in games where the server had initially seemed in control; and if the challenge was wrong (as Rafa seemed to know it was), it would mean that he had interrupted his own playing rhythm just before a crucial second serve. But all that didn’t seem to matter: it felt like he knew he essentially had things in hand. Shortly afterward, still a few points away from the win, he was trotting about the court looking more laidback – even smiling a little – than I can ever recall seeing him in a similar situation.

Perhaps this comes out of having been out of the game for several months, not knowing if he would be able to come back or play at a high level again – and consequently just being grateful for whatever chances he gets. Whatever the case, if that’s the attitude we see in the next few months, I’ll take it – with fingers crossed, of course, that the knees can keep pace with the extraordinary mental strength.

[Some earlier tennis pieces: on rivalries and fan narratives; the war within Rafa; a review of Nadal's memoir]

Lekin...

There is much to enjoy in In the Company of a Poet, Nasreen Munni Kabir’s series of conversations (conducted mostly on Skype) with Gulzar. The poet/lyricist/filmmaker speaks at some length about his childhood, his writing career and his experiences in the movie industry, including his association with such personages as Bimal Roy, Meena Kumari and Hemant Kumar. But what stopped me in my tracks was when I read about Gulzar’s tennis-love. “You know, I play tennis every morning and the very thought of an Urdu poet wearing shorts and playing tennis goes against the grain,” he remarks at one point, “Ye Urdu ke shaayar hain aur subah ye knickers pahen ke kaise khelte hain?”

Shortly afterwards comes this poetic metaphor:

I wake up at five when it is still dark. I want the sun to look for me instead of my looking for the sun. Just as the first serve in tennis can be advantageous, so the first serve must be mine. The second goes to the sun.

And still later, this bit, which left me feeling not very gruntled.

I enjoy the way Federer plays. He is cool and has a gentle smile. The only thing I have against Nadal is the villainous grimaces he makes.

As a poet, Gulzarsaab should know that one may smile and smile and be a villain. Ah well. Just goes to show that it isn’t easy to be a creative genius AND a discerning sports fan. (In any case, Rafa chooses to serve second when he wins the toss. Everyone knows that.)

[Two pieces about my Nadal-fandom here and here]

Rafa: the pros and cons of a mid-career memoir

[Okay, this is my last piece on tennis for some time - a review I did of Rafael Nadal's autobiography for Business Standard. Some earlier thoughts on Nadal and the book are here]

Sporting careers follow a different trajectory and time-scale to most others. Since a top player in a physically demanding sport may well retire at age 30 or less, having already achieved most of the things he will be remembered for, there’s nothing unusual about an athlete having a memoir out at a relatively young age. But some debate can be expected when a sportsman’s autobiography arrives while his career is still active and near its peak. And so, the first question that must be asked about Rafael Nadal’s life chronicle Rafa is: why now?

One obvious answer is that last year, at the age of just 24, Nadal became the youngest male tennis player to complete the Career Slam – that is, winning all four majors (the Australian Open, the French Open, Wimbledon and the US Open) at least once. That’s a prestigious enough achievement in itself, but the context made it more dramatic. A year earlier, injuries, family troubles and apparent lack of mental focus had combined to put a question mark against Nadal’s longevity; many journalists and viewers had sounded the death knell for his career. This made his resurgence – and the solidification of his status as one of his sport’s best players – even more impressive.

In our age of instant information and round-the-clock media scrutiny, it must have seemed natural to come out with the “official”, inspirational story. Rafa covers various aspects of Nadal’s life, but the narrative is anchored around the two defining matches of his career: the celebrated 2008 Wimbledon final against his great rival Roger Federer, which saw Nadal win his first non-clay Slam and take a big step towards claiming the number one ranking; and the 2010 US Open final win – against another worthy rival Novak Djokovic – which completed the Spaniard’s Slam collection.

Though we’re told that this book is authored “with” journalist John Carlin, it’s safe to assume that the writing is entirely Carlin’s. For one thing, Rafa isn’t exclusively in the first person; alternating with its main narrative are short, “objective” chapters that provide an outsider’s commentary on Nadal and his inner circle. Also, the refined coolness of the writing (phrases like “the cathedral hush of Wimbledon’s Centre Court” and “I didn’t expressly prohibit them from raising the subject” appear in the first couple of pages) will initially be distancing for anyone familiar with Nadal’s spoken English (“He play better than me – that’s the true, no?”). But as you read on, it works because it reflects the inner clarity of a contemplative, grounded sportsman.

This comes across most vividly in Nadal’s reflections on the day before a big match, and the hours leading up to it: about chatting with family over dinner and pretending it’s a normal day, though everyone knows he has already started playing the match “in a space inside my head that should remain mine alone”. Or how, when he finds himself alone with Federer in the locker room a few minutes before a final – just the two of them in a spookily quiet space that housed 128 players a fortnight earlier – he settles for a quick handshake. (“To joke or chatter about football, as we might before an exhibition match, would have been a lie he would have seen through immediately and interpreted as a sign of fear.”)

A major talking point around any mid-career memoir is what a sportsperson should or should not disclose while he is still playing. Nadal has been prone to recurring injuries, which get extensive media coverage. His supporters point out that like many other athletes, he plays through the pain and is often good enough to win tournaments despite his ailments; but there has been a rising belief that injuries are used as convenient excuses for losses, or that his frequent medical time-outs are ploys to throw off an opponent’s rhythm. Even those who are inclined to give him the benefit of doubt have gently suggested that he might be turning into a bit of a hypochondriac; recent incidents such as the one where grabbing a hot plate in a restaurant led to nasty finger blisters, or the unfortunate attack of cramps during a US Open press conference, have been the subjects of much Internet humour.

Perhaps with an eye on this negative publicity, Rafa tries to set the record straight, providing medical details about the congenital foot disease that almost ended Nadal’s career in 2005, and the effect it had on his subsequent physical and mental conditioning. An obvious downside to making such revelations is that it might give rivals extra information as well as motivation. But this is clearly a risk he has opted to take.

Other highlights include Nadal discussing the ups and downs of his relationship with the only coach he has ever known, his paternal uncle Toni – a hard taskmaster who helped channel his nephew’s famous mental strength, but who may have been excessively harsh on occasion. These passages have received much press coverage, most of which makes the book sound more controversial than it is, but when you read them as part of a larger narrative they don’t seem so shocking. The overall impression here is that of a young man who is still highly dependent on family (Nadal lives in a multi-storeyed house with his large clan) but who is also becoming conscious of the need to speak his own mind and break out of a parochial image.

All this adds up to a book that has many candid interludes mixed with some bland reportage and superfluous chronicling of career highlights. But in any case, Rafa might already be somewhat dated. When it was written, Nadal had just come off his finest season and it seemed his position at the top would be secure for some time, but things are no longer so rosy. He has had a fine 2011 by most standards, but he has been a distant second-best this year, having been overshadowed by Djokovic.

Whether this marks the beginning of a permanent decline or motivation for another comeback remains to be seen. Either way, there’s no doubt that Nadal will update this autobiography – or write a new one – when his career ends. The revised version, written with the benefit of distance, should be even more revealing.

[Finger blisters photo credit: Nadal News]