Nadal, the king of the incredible: injury, comeback and semifinals

Wimbledon

- quarters - That's right

Taylor Fritz

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Rafael Nadal

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Wimbledon Cathedral explodes, everyone's feet.

It can not be otherwise: welcome to the unlikely.

Rafael Nadal continues defying all convention and all logic, that chassis that asks him to raise the white flag.

This time it is the abdominal that whips.

He soon does, but he rebels and rebels against the disgrace of him.

Thus, injured, cornered and with water up to his neck, at the limit, he reduces Taylor Fritz (3-6, 7-5, 3-6, 7-5 and 7-6(4), after 4h 21m) and tries to Wimbledon semifinal against Australian Nick Kyrgios.

The interviewer proceeds with logic: “How did you do it, Rafa?”.

And he, the never-ending champion, doesn't find words either and warns at the same time: “I don't know.

I enjoy playing these types of matches and the energy of this court… The semi-final?

First of all, I hope to be ready to play.”

This is how this incomprehensible Wednesday ends.

Or not so much, maybe.

The explanation is in the surname: Nadal.

This is how it all starts.

Physically apparently light, Fritz hits the ball as if he were tired and the racket weighed him a ton, slow in maneuvers and predictable.

As if it had just dawned for him.

On the other hand, the early riser Nadal has had his alarm clock ring early and seeing the corridor clear, he bites, he accelerates and attacks the net, prolonging the inertia of the previous round.

He has the Mallorcan appetite and enjoys almost half an hour of banquet in which everything works wonderfully: from the serve to the return, through the

and backhand, without forgetting the slice.

So far, an impeccable staging.

High note.

Nadal in that expansive and dominating version that he invites us to think of another jump in level, necessary to line up the straight line for the semifinals.

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A thirty-year-old in a Yankees cap hollers from one of the backs to try to give Fritz a push, always lazy the American, inspired by that orgasmic sound that acts as a stimulant and forces him to get his first leg out of bed.

Little by little, in a very strange way, the turn comes.

He (24 years old and 14th in the world) has already removed his blemishes, begins to gain flight, Nadal's tennis becomes blurred and everything is even.

From 3-1 to 3-3, and then another blow from the American.

The Spaniard gives up the serve with a double fault and leans forward, in a gesture that he will repeat in the second set, when the game has entered a loop and the sequence is played.

What the hell is going on? asks the respectable man from La Catedral, who at 3-3 in the second

(3-0 starting) confirms an emergency situation: Nadal is not well.

Something happens.

His face has twisted, he has lost mobility and when it comes to serving he barely lifts an inch from the grass, protecting himself from who knows what.

His foot appears to work fine, or at least there is no evidence, and the abdominal mishap theory begins to take hold.

Six days ago, in the second season of the tournament, the Spaniard had played with a protective patch in the area in front of Ricardas Berankis and attributed it to some laces associated, he said, to the prolonged period without stepping on the green.

He summoned that day to talk about tennis, and not about his body.

And she repeated two or three times: "If the physicist lets me...".

A tagline to keep in mind that she inopportunely comes to the head of the attendees when she requests medical attention and takes refuge for five minutes in the locker room.

On the way back, the situation does not change.

Nadal is a tennis player without a serve and Fritz, apparently, the gates of heaven have been opened for him.

However, the incident has as much or more repercussions on the American's game, that he loses his excitement and becomes confused: serving at 160 kilometers per hour – when he usually averages around 180 with the first ones – the Spaniard throws wrists and saves a game and another, and in the end he stabs him to take the set.

The incredible, again.

The English centre-back, aware of the emotional wound of the hero and of all the physical hardships that she has had to endure during the last year, foot, rib and musculature, explodes and covers him.

The story should not end like this.

Maybe now, maybe today, but not like this.

That's not fair.

"I'm tired of talking about my body, tired of myself and all the problems I have," he said two days earlier, after dismounting the Dutchman Botic van de Zandschulp on Monday.

Meanwhile, from Nadal's

his father Sebastià intervenes, who in the exchange of glances makes a very clear gesture with his hands, as if he did not know him: Get out of here, son, go now!

The patriarch is flanked and his sister Maribel and her agent, Carlos Costa, support the request.

He watches and weighs, but chooses otherwise.

He is already an adult;

It's 36 springs, and a sprout is on the way.

A threshold of pain that escapes any logic.

It takes much more than a series of punctures, a break or whatever he has there to get him off a tennis court, and more if what is at stake these days is at stake.

So he insists and resists, the legend rebels.

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drip .

But still he is there.

He still can't serve normally and survives by generating power out of nowhere, theoretically exposed to a storm at the first returns from Fritz, who doesn't take advantage of the candy.

The American, however, lets the train through.

It's another cripple.

He has jumped onto the track with a compression bandage on his left thigh that he ends up getting rid of.

There are also

under there , more tapes.

It happened in March on the cement of Indian Wells, it is repeated this Wednesday in the London meadow.

In the California final, the two also battled badly.

So, the American suffered from an ankle and doubted whether he would compete or not.

The bet paid off.

A Masters 1000 to the backpack and a notch to count and save a lifetime.

Surrender to Nadal, be as it is, is a chimera.

“We are going to wait a bit…”, the Spaniard tells the physio, while from the box they continue to urge him to resign due to the possibility of medium-term damage.

There he stays.

There he goes.

Wrong, wrong.

He stares at the ground, turns the coconut over and remains in a trance;

she leans her head against the wall out of frustration.

But she won't change her mind.

And not only does he not turn his face, but he hardens the game and forces the American with the cut and the drop shots, based on this two-faced veteran, so sweet and so bitter at the same time, in which he has lost a point of athletic spark and in which his body asks for mercy day after day, but in which he has incorporated other fabulous tools.

Job and more job.

Besides being very good, Nadal is smarter than hunger.

Its catalog has countless solutions, the best survival equipment.

It holds up and withstands the ups and downs.

There is no shake that wrinkles it, there is no slap that takes away the color: from

to

in the fourth set, it stands up, grits its teeth, fights, grabs the match with suction cups and dilates it until the fifth

to the joy of the old central London, delivered before the demonstration.

Another would already be on the stretcher, undergoing tests and asking for the return flight.

He does not.

In the face of adversity, immensity.

It is Nadal, and there is only one.

From one onslaught to another, first the Mallorcan and then the one in front, set out to resolve everything in the tiebreaker, heads or tails.

And from there to the apotheosis: The Cathedral bows before the king of the incredible.

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