Out of Wimbledon’s darkness, a new tennis era shines brightly

July 7, 2008

WIMBLEDON, England: There will be other great men’s finals at Wimbledon, quite possibly another between Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer. But it seems safe to declare that there will never be another grass-court masterwork quite like the chiaroscuro, five-set epic that ended Sunday with Nadal dethroning Federer in what looked rather closer to darkness than dusk.

It was, by acclamation, one of the finest Grand Slam finals ever played: one that moved seamlessly into the conversation with Bjorn Borg’s and John McEnroe’s seminal marathon here in 1980. It was appropriate that this latest classic ushered in a new phase of power sharing in men’s tennis just as Wimbledon prepared to embark on a more resolutely modern era of its own.

Next year, a retractable, translucent roof will be in place above Centre Court, meaning that the lengthy rain delays that pushed this final deep into the evening will be consigned to the past on the All England Club’s primary show court: an intimate, reassuring place that often feels more like a theater than a stadium.

Sunday night was one of the understandable exceptions as the crowd – still occupying nearly every seat despite the lateness of the hour – groaned and gasped, murmured and shrieked and ultimately leaped to its feet and applauded as Nadal fell flat on his back after ending Federer’s five-year winning streak by prevailing 6-4, 6-4, 6-7 (5-7), 6-7 (8-10), 9-7.

“It’s the best victory of his career; mentally he’s never been as strong, not even at the French Open,” said Nadal’s uncle and coach Toni Nadal.

Federer, the 26-year-old from Switzerland, has gradually loosened his grip on power this season. At the Australian Open, he was suffering from mononucleosis, undiagnosed at the time, and was beaten soundly in the semifinals by eventual champion Novak Djokovic of Serbia. Federer was then given a beating of a higher order by Nadal in a lopsided French Open final. Now Federer has lost the tennis prize he treasures most, after his comeback stalled at Wimbledon with a record sixth consecutive singles title in reach.

Earlier in the year, the Swiss looked slower afoot than at his peak and his signature forehand was misfiring with uncharacteristic regularity. But once he had worked his way back into the match, he still looked like the champion of yore on Sunday: slamming aces on break points, covering court fluidly and hitting mid-court forehand winners in bunches.

The difference is that Nadal, already Federer’s master on clay, has now risen to join him on grass and perhaps very soon, on hard courts, too. At Toni Nadal’s urging, his nephew has improved his left-handed serve, adding pace and variety to what was once considered a weakness. He has also moved closer to the baseline, adjusting his iconoclastic technique to strike the ball earlier, depriving the opposition of precious time by lowering the trajectory of his wickedly spinning forehand.

His one-handed slice backhand has also improved and his standard two-handed backhand remains an underrated strength. Federer has called it “a second forehand” because Nadal, who plays golf and throws right handed, can use his strong right hand to support his left on the stroke.

Federer hardly looks like a spent force, but at 22, Nadal is entering what is traditionally prime time for tennis champions to accumulate the bulk of their trophies and already has won four French Opens and a Wimbledon.

“I think I’ve already proved that I’m not just a clay-court player,” Nadal said. “But to win in Wimbledon is very special to me. Of the four Grand Slams, it’s the most traditional. It’s really the tournament.”

With his victory, Nadal has indeed shattered the thought that Spanish men can win major titles only on clay. But he was already the first true modern tennis superstar in his home country, because of his precocity, his flamboyant style and his appealingly down-to-earth personality.

But what continues to define Nadal as a tennis player is his point-in, point-out combativeness and positive energy. The latest example came Sunday, as he soldiered on after squandering two match points in the fourth set.

“If you watch 10 courts, almost on every court without looking at the scoreboard, you know who is winning or losing from the body language,” said American coach Brad Gilbert. “With Rafa, looking at the scoreboard makes no difference. He could be 5-0 up or 0-5 down, and he’s battling.”

Federer, though hardly the most demonstrative champion on court, gives more clues, and he is now 6-12 against Nadal in their head-to-head matches and 2-4 against him in Grand Slam finals.

Though Federer is still ahead of Nadal in this week’s rankings, based on their cumulative results over the past 52 weeks, Nadal has opened up a commanding lead in points accumulated in 2008. He has won six tournaments this year, including two Grand Slam titles, while Federer’s only victories have come in minor events in Estoril, Portugal and Halle, Germany.

Manuel Santana, the last Spanish man to win Wimbledon in 1966, told the Spanish newspaper El País that for him Nadal was already “the No. 1.”

“I don’t understand or accept the points system of the ATP,” Santana said. “‘Those are the rules,’ they tell me. But something is not working and it should be changed if the one who wins Roland Garros, Queen’s and Wimbledon is not number one.”

If Nadal had been more consistently successful on hard courts in the past year, he would already be at the top of the virtual pyramid. But he has often lost momentum in the latter stages of the season and failed to win a title in the second half of 2007. Meanwhile, Federer was still dominant: winning his fourth straight United States Open and the point-rich, season-ending Tennis Masters Cup in Shanghai.

Federer was in no mood to entertain changing-of-the-guard questions Sunday night after what he conceded was the toughest defeat of his glittering career.

“Write what you want,” he said curtly to one of his inquisitors. “I’m going to try to play well and win the Olympics and the U.S. Open.”

Nadal has been chasing Federer for more than three years. The Swiss has been atop the rankings for a record 232 straight weeks and counting. Nadal has been second for a record 155 weeks and counting.

But with comparatively few points to defend in the second half of this season, Nadal is now in excellent position to pass Federer later this summer – no matter what the Swiss does – if he can maintain his form and, more important, his health.

There are already some nagging concerns. Though most freshly minted Wimbledon champions would have lingered in London for a day (or flown to Spain to get the party started), Nadal dutifully jetted off to Stuttgart, Germany, to announce in person that he was withdrawing from the Mercedes Cup tournament because of a right knee injury.

Weary champions have routinely produced dubious medical excuses for pulling out of small tournaments over the years, but Nadal is generally a Majorcan of his word. He played in Stuttgart after his draining, demoralizing, five-set loss to Federer in the Wimbledon final last year.

“My future plan is to relax; I played for the last four or five months without stopping,” Nadal said at a news conference in Stuttgart. “I need to recover. I have to work with my physio and work with my doctor.”

Nadal wears tape below both his knees when he plays to prevent patellar tendinitis. He also wears special insoles to prevent a recurrence of the fracture in his left foot that kept him off tour in late 2005 and 2006. At Wimbledon, he heard a crack behind his right knee early in his fourth-round match with Mikhail Youzhny and briefly stopped playing before being reassured by doctors (and later by a magnetic resonance imaging scan). Against Federer, he slipped and landed hard on the same knee early in the third set.

But though he limped to his chair and received treatment briefly on the changeover, he certainly did not look any slower as he chased after Federer’s huge inside-out forehands and skidding, chipped backhands the rest of the deeply entertaining way.

“The greatest match I’ve ever seen,” said McEnroe, the combustible champion turned voluble commentator.

McEnroe was, of course, a participant in the 1980 final: one of the other matches on the Wimbledon short list. Others in the last 20 years include Stefan Edberg’s five-set defeat of Boris Becker in 1990 and, for the sentimentalists among us, Goran Ivanisevic’s cathartic five-set victory over Patrick Rafter on a People’s Monday in 2001.

Like Federer-Nadal, Borg-McEnroe also had an epic, fourth-set tiebreaker, won 18-16 by McEnroe. The difference was that the established champion, Borg, ended up taking the fifth set 8-6 to secure his fifth straight Wimbledon title.

That changing of the guard would not come until the following year. But the 1980 match was the one that lived on most vividly, becoming a staple of BBC and international television coverage during rain breaks for the last 28 years.

Federer and Nadal won’t get the same treatment, which might come as some consolation to the loser. Rain breaks on Centre Court at Wimbledon are about to become as much a part of the past as the wooden racket.

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