Rafael Nadal takes a deep breath, loads his cheeks and snorts loudly as sweat trickles down his temples and heads for the corner. There, old fox, he turns around and takes advantage of the pause to dry off and exchange a couple of impressions with his bench, where his team frowns in unison and tries to convey patience because in front of them there is a rambunctious tennis player, short –1.75 is a few centimeters in this tennis–, Lithuanian and thirtysomething (32) that requires him to win each and every one of the points that are settled this Thursday in the central London. In the end, the champion of 22 majors snorts again, but this time in relief: 6-4, 6-4, 4-6 and 6-3, after 3h 02m. Now, after the long-suffering victory in the premiere against Francisco Cerúndolo, he has run into a bone again. Ricardas Berankis did not come for a walk.
This is Wimbledon, and each parade down the track is an entry into the maze. There is no truce or pause, but a lot of speed and a lot of vertigo, so Nadal – quoted on Saturday with Lorenzo Sonego (54th) in an unprecedented pulse – does not finish finding relief and cannot spare the slightest to unravel a sticky, demanding duel awkward from start to finish. These are the first rounds and there is a lack of tone, but he already warned on Tuesday, after surrendering to the Argentine: this is about surviving. One more day, one season less. The Mallorcan does it, forced to chew the exchanges like a ruminant, and he crosses the third threshold of the tournament in a progressive line, although still far from that sweet spot that he reached in the last three editions. His plan, in any case, follows the desired parameters.
In the absence of brilliance, Nadal clings to each training session and each racket stroke. Don’t let your guard down. Should not. In other circumstances and another territory, Berankis (32 years old, 106th in the world) should not represent anything more than a Chinese in the shoe, but on green everything is different and the memory sensor does not allow him to relax. Look straight ahead, see the Lithuanian and activate all your senses because there are those two dangerous precedents; when he knocked him out in the first round in 2013, Belgian Steve Darcis was 144th, and when Australian Nick Kyrgios did it a year later he was 144th. I mean, no joke. Nadal sharpens his gaze, puts on the white jumpsuit and entrusts himself to the spirit of the day laborer, shovel goes, shovel comes. No alternative.
“Do you have bananas?”, his rival asks the referee to eat potassium and calories to keep up the pressure, erre que erre. Low gravity point and a good wrist, Berankis is a nuisance. He doesn’t give in even to shots. It happens that the Spaniard does not want any entanglements and tries to impose a control situation, a flat script that he manages to capture in the first set and maintain in the second, but not in the third. The stress never ends. In the fourth, however, he overflows with the gear change. At the moment of truth, Nadal accelerates and resolves, but it has been a rough and hard-fought afternoon, the restlessness translated into that ball that he kicks and that other one that he shakes angrily because he tries to find the automatisms, but these they resist. He tries to hone in on his forehand and backhand, do more damage on serve, and on a few occasions hesitates in his shot selection.
London, grass and times: the key. Each hit is a dilemma and must be resolved in milliseconds. Every maneuver is a puzzle. To make matters worse, at the last minute the rain intervened and stopped the game for 50 minutes, when he had already given the arreón and had opened a gap (3-0). Wimbledon does not forget the traditions: downpour, umbrellas and tarps. The rhythm is broken. Racing around the plant and stampeding up the hill to Aorangi Park, where the picnic ends and everyone scrambles for shelter. Good old Berankis does not find it, who after a commendable exercise of resistance and intention, ends up opening the way. Nadal claims it and crosses out another date on the calendar, then he is five steps away from making another summit.
The victory (307 in the Grand Slams) allows him to stand out in the history of Martina Navratilova (306) and maintain the aspiration of equaling the iceman, Björn Borg, that blond-haired alien who linked five consecutive wins in London and, I have here the objective of the Balearic Islands, he achieved on three occasions (1978, 1979 and 1980) the Roland Garros-Wimbledon double in the same season. “Every day is a challenge,” he emphasizes after three hours without respite. “I need to improve”, he specifies when asked what he has done well. “I have to accept that things are not going to be perfect and keep working”, he concludes towards the crossing with the Italian Sonego, aware that these are pick and shovel days. What’s your name?
“COVID? IT’S NOT PARANOIA, IT’S REALITY”
BC | London
Self-critical, Nadal assured in the conference room that he had not been fine in the first two sets and that he considers that he has gained time to continue fine-tuning his game.
“I didn’t have the best start, honestly, and probably the best finish. I have room to improve,” she stated. “The first two sets have been bad, and I’m not one to fool myself. I have played badly because I have played badly, there is no excuse. Afterwards, it is true that I have played much better in all senses and that I have been finding things during the match”, he continued.
He downplayed the prolonged break – “it’s part of tennis, I’m not complaining at all and I think the procedure was correct” – and invited those present to talk more about tennis than about physicality when asked about the protective tapes he wore in the abdominal area: “I felt tired from the other day, I had soreness because I haven’t played on grass for many years. The sensations were not the best”.
However, he underlined the ability that he, Federer and Djokovic have to overcome difficult days – “we are the ones who have won the most by playing badly” – and that “there are days when it is time to row”. This Thursday, in addition, began with a start. Roberto Bautista had to leave the tournament after being infected by covid, the third case after those of the Croatian Marin Cilic and the Italian Matteo Berrettini.
“It’s not paranoia, it’s a reality,” he explained in English; “A good friend has had to go abroad and this kind of thing happens. I’m not doing many things, I’m at home. This part of this challenging world of these last two years. I don’t think things are not being done well, because we need to have freedom and now covid is less dangerous in terms of health, but when you open, these kinds of things happen. That is all”.
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