Three years later, Nadal against amnesia

Rafael Nadal's Mallorcan tan contrasts with the nuclear white of his uniform.

The 36-year-old Spaniard has just completed the first training session and lunch, and talks to the journalists with slightly swollen and glazed eyes, as if he had just woken up.

“Yesterday I had them tired”, he says before picking up the racket again in the middle of the afternoon and finishing polishing the day with an extra hour of rehearsal, backhand goes and forehand comes.

He is accompanied by the coach Francis Roig, the smiling Marc López and his shadow, the physio Rafael Maymò.

The session passes in the peaceful stillness that dominates the Wimbledon complex before the tournament takes flight.

In the morning, that ocular discomfort has forced Nadal to have to use Maymò's sunglasses, in a scene witnessed on the front line by the footballer Gerard Piqué.

The Barcelona defender, who in turn is the organizer of the Davis Cup, is accompanied by his two sons, who do not take their eyes off the balls of the tennis player and that running exercise that he is carrying out to recover the lost automatisms.

Three years have passed since the Spaniard played his last match on grass –against Roger Federer– and, he remarks, it is his turn to rewind.

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"In the end, after three years one forgets what kind of things, what works and what doesn't work, so one has to discover it all over again," explains Nadal, who only a week later After winning his 22nd major, he began his preparation on the pitch.

The first station was in Mallorca, with five days of filming in which he put his left foot to the test and which allowed him to conclude that the new applied treatment (radiofrequency) was on the right track;

and the second takes place these days in London, the ultimate test of cotton.

“If I'm here it's because things are going well;

if not, it wouldn't be.

I'm happy”, she introduces, remarking that he is walking normally again and that, for now, he no longer suffers those “terrible” days of limping.

"It has been a logical week, with better and worse moments, but clearly with an ascending line," she continues, before recalling that she has not competed in the British Grand Prix since 2019 and that this requires an extra.

“It makes it a little extra complicated because in the end memory is important;

It's not just the current moment.

When you have a more recent memory on the surface, adaptation is easier, ”she says.

First the pandemic and then the misfortune of the foot prevented him from parading through London, a territory that requires very specific codes.

Surely the most difficult to apply.

The Spaniard, winner of the tournament in 2008 and 2010, analyzes from a technical perspective the requirements that he must meet to return to another privileged situation and be able to fight for the title.

Piqué and his children observe Nadal's training. Manuel Sánchez (EFE)

During the three and a half minutes that the answer lasts, he points to the new configuration of the balls – "they are hollower than ten years ago, more punctured, and you must choose the hits very well" –, to the way of moving –” it's vital how you face the ball, you can't doubt” – since at Wimbledon, the tennis player can only look forward – “here you can't defend yourself” – and he has no room to think.

The dissertation is shared by the rest of the professionals, who try to adapt in the antechamber to those mechanisms that are so specific in the mechanics of hitting, movements and in any type of maneuver;

more if possible for players like him, who for one reason or another have not been able to parade through the tournament in recent times, or Carlos Alcaraz, who attends touched by the elbow and who tries to decipher the language of the grass without much luck so far.

Two preparatory duels in Hurligham, two defeats;

yesterday, 7-6(2) and 6-4 against Casper Ruud.

This is not the case of Novak Djokovic, winner of the last three editions – against Kevin Anderson, Roger Federer and Matteo Berrettini – and who fully trusts his ability to adjust to the record on the fly: “I haven't played any previous tournament, but I've had success here in the past without having played before.

Over the years, I've been successful in quickly adapting to the surface, so there's no reason to think I won't be able to do it again."

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