Barcelona is the first point of an emotional escalation that aims, or so the protagonist suggests, to reach the climax in the sand of Paris. In just over a month—exactly on May 26—Roland Garros will begin, a goal for which Rafael Nadal is concentrating all his efforts because the sketch that his mind suggested during the preseason has been blown up and the tennis player has not There was no choice but to improvise on the fly. He dictates the day to day, actually. Ball by ball. He could not play in Australia, nor in Indian Wells and, after ruling out Monte Carlo, the starting point of the clay court tour, he found an unexpected oasis in the club of his life. Godó's is a first goodbye with a highly symbolic load - the outcome starts from the origin -, summarized in seven days that concentrate as many certainties as questions: the Mallorcan hopes to enjoy one last dance in the Bois de Boulogne, but today, everything is still up in the air.
Game, but conditional.
The duels against Flavio Cobolli (62nd) and Alex de Miñaur (11th) have revealed that Nadal's competitive instinct remains intact, beyond the scoreboard and statistics. As soon as he got a temperature point, his tennis allowed him to perform satisfactorily against the young Italian and challenge the Australian one on one, although as his gasoline ran out, his performance fell abruptly. Against rivals with a light profile like the first, his intelligence and his hierarchy may be enough, but the story changes if the one in front proposes a linear ball rhythm. “I've played with what I have,” he said honestly. And the facts say that the
drive
and the backhand are easily recoverable, but the service is not. Depleted abdominal, the average speed of his kick (around 190 km / h) has been significantly reduced, although he increased it from the first (160 km / h) to the second appearance (170 km / h) of the tournament.
The physicist, with pins.
Logically, the setbacks of recent times and the time under the knife have taken their toll on a player who will turn 38 on June 3, and who has an extensive history of injuries and forced layoffs behind him. If the uncertainty was already considerable, in this last stretch it has been resized. “Many things can happen,” he indicated before the staging in Pedralbes. Nadal admits that “today, the main thing is not to win, but to get out of the tournament healthy, more than anything else.” And the fear that the body could fail him again at one time or another is still present. “I don't know how you can respond to him depending on what kind of demands; I have played very little during the last year and a half, so we will see how far I can go. I will try not to cross dangerous lines,” he adds. Of course: “I come out stronger.”
The draws and the rhythm.
Located in 644th place in the world list, the Spaniard is forced to pay a double price to be able to access the tournaments: invitations or
protected
ranking
. The loss of status also means that from the first rounds he must face important opponents like De Minaur himself, so the terrain tilts from the beginning. Unlike the good times, when he had a relatively good margin to calibrate his game and apply adjustments, now he will not find an escape. In Indian Wells, for example, his second confrontation was intended to be against the Dane Holger Rune – number seven at that time. If he does not manage to go further, as in the case of Barcelona, the possibility of gaining competitive rhythm reduces the load that he can incorporate in training with top-level players. “If my body gets used to it, I will be able to take a step forward. I have to measure how I feel. But I feel like I have taken a step forward,” he points out.
Three to five sets.
At the beginning of the year, Nadal already had a long battle with the Australian Jordan Thompson. That day, January 5, the clock recorded 3h 25m, an extension that his body was not able to endure. Although he emphasizes that today his priority objective is to be able to jump onto the track, "not win", to get closer to the purpose of saying goodbye while being truly competitive, he will have to acquire a continuity that should be even greater in the hypothetical case of landing in Paris. There, the matches would move on to the demanding five-set format, without forgetting the requirements of the clay context. Least damaging in terms of knees or supports, it is the most demanding from the point of view of resistance and strength. “Sometimes it is difficult to play when you know that you are not going to be able to fight the whole game; today, because in a few weeks it will surely be […]. “Once the first set is lost, the match is over,” he acknowledged after giving in to De Miñaur.
Roland Garros, last destination?
During his last speech to journalists, Nadal emphasized that the real goal is Paris, where he could not play last year as a result of the iliopsoas injury: “There, let it be what God wants. If you have to try [risk], that's the time to say: 'whatever happens, here it is.' He limited his desire to the French great, citing the Masters 1000 in Madrid and Rome along the way; However, at no point did he mention the Paris Olympic Games, an event that will take place from the end of July and that is very far away for him right now. “I have to measure how I feel. I understand that for people who are not in my daily life, it is difficult to understand my current moment and my last months, but I have to act based on how I find myself,” he prioritizes. However, he has already stated on occasion that he would be excited to do a fifth Olympic parade.
Withdrawal: yes but no.
In an interview given to EL PAÍS at the end of December, while he was preparing at the headquarters of his academy in Kuwait, the athlete assured that before the Parisian
major
began he would already know if he was going to hang up his racket or not. Nadal has always been reluctant to anticipate his goodbye because, the moment you think about it or visualize it, he understands, “you are already entering that dynamic,” he has stated more than once. He admits that at that moment he is getting closer to him and in his resignation it is perceived that he accepts the course of events reluctantly, forced to leave a place, that of the competition, that he still does not want to leave. . However, the lack of regularity that he was pursuing is clarifying the horizon and guiding him towards a definitive decision. “You never know what the future holds, and life probably sets your path for you. Now he's making it clear to me quite clearly. “I played this tournament as if it were my last time at Godó,” he responded on Wednesday, while the fan generally shared the same impression.
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