Few returns have been as eagerly anticipated as Rafael Nadal's return to the ATP this past week at a clay court tournament in Chile.
Although there have been some fantastic happenings in tennis since his injury occurred, his absence has certainly been felt. There's just no other way to describe it.
Coming into this relatively minor tournament, optimism about Nadal's return was guarded. I think most figured he would have some success in Chile, but I think we all expected him to not quite look like his old self.
The guarded part of that optimism, however, went right out the door as soon as he took the court.
In doubles, he and partner Juan Monaco looked like favorites to win the title. In singles, against relatively soft competition, I will admit, he looked fantastic.
He quickly dispatched Federico Delbonis in his first match and countryman Daniel Gimeno-Traver didn't fare much better in Nadal's second match, the tournament quarterfinals. It was in the semifinals that he really turned it on, though. In that match, he took down Jeremy Chardy, one of the hotter players on tour so far this season by the score of 6-2, 6-2.
It looked like it was smooth sailing from there as he was set to take on little-known Horacio Zeballos in the final.
But then it wasn't.
After taking the first set in a tiebreaker, a set in which most were impressed that Zeballos had just stayed close, Nadal dropped the last two sets to lose the title.
The reaction from the tennis Twitterverse, the real barometer for these types of things in this day and age, was nothing short of shock and awe and why shouldn't it have been?
According to The Tennis Abstract, Nadal had not lost a match to someone outside the top-50 on clay since 2004, before Rafael Nadal was Rafael Nadal, an all-time great.
After stepping back, though, you can see why we might be overreacting to this loss.
For starters, Zeballos isn't bad. He's ranked 73rd in the world, which isn't great, but it's not like this guy is some kid in his first top-level tournament with a ranking in the 200s. He's also coming off something of a high, as he and partner David Nalbandian clinched Argentina's Davis Cup tie two weekends ago against Germany with a win in their doubles rubber.
Physically, Nadal probably isn't quite there yet, either. He admitted as much in the lead up to this event. He was not shy about admitted that his knee isn't 100 percent and that he won't know if the surgery he had truly did the job until weeks later.
It speaks to how good Nadal is on clay that he was able to get as far as he did this week even though he is still battling his body.
Overall, it's hard to have anything but positive things to say about Nadal's return in Chile. He won some matches, he played like his old self in patches and he didn't have any real setbacks.
Most of all, I think he showed us that given time to fully get back into match shape, he's going to get back to his usual level of play, at least on clay.
For me, that's good enough for his first week back.
No comments:
Post a Comment