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PARIS – Roland Garros was shrouded in existential fog so thick that many of the players couldn’t see beyond the tip of their noses. As the French Open unfolded, the weather was cold and gray, the grounds were ghostly quiet, and the cafes, boutiques and monuments that players normally love were blurry images from the windows of their courtesy cars.
Much of what sets Paris apart from, say, the Indian Wells tournament in California, was closed to them, trapped as they were in hotel habitat meant to protect them from the coronavirus France has struggled to contain.
“I’m going to be honest here,” said Tunisia’s Ons Jabeur, the 35th-ranked woman in the world, in the early days of the tournament. “I was like, ‘Why are we playing games?'”
And then, like an oracle delivering a message from on high, a voice sounded in Philippe Chatrier Court.
“The feeling is sadder than usual,” Spanish Rafael Nadal said in English after his first-round win against Egor Gerasimov. “Maybe that’s what you need to feel. You need to be sad. Many people in the world are suffering. “
Every herd needs a lucid thinker, and tennis is fortunate to have Nadal, whose frank talk throughout this year’s pandemic has been a model of humility, empathy and perspective. When Nadal speaks, in his native Spanish, English or, more recently, French, his peers listen.
The Tao of Rafa resonated with Jabeur, who said, “If he’s a champion and he’s not complaining, I mean, who am I to complain right now?”
Directly following Nadal’s direct conversation, Jabeur became the first Arab woman at Roland Garros to advance to the round of 16.
Nadal, 34, has his sights set on his own page in history. Against Novak Djokovic in Sunday’s final, Nadal can secure his 13th French Open championship, an achievement that defies reality, and tie Roger Federer’s men’s record of 20 individual Grand Slam titles.
It would be a momentous milestone to go where only one other man has been. And yet Nadal is asked far less about her quest for Federer than Serena Williams about being one major title away from overtaking the all-time female leader, Margaret Court, with 24 Grand Slam singles titles.
Federer, sidelined this year after undergoing two knee surgeries, has not finished competing, so there is a sense that Nadal is chasing a moving target. That partly explains the discrepancy. But the fact that Nadal maneuvers around the interrogation line as deftly as he does with a ball to his backhand that becomes a forehand winner should not be discounted.
In an interview in May with the Spanish newspaper La Voz de Galicia, Nadal said: “I am not obsessed and it is not a great goal for me. I only worry about my own career and my life. I don’t care if the person who lives next to me has a bigger house than mine, has a better car or earns more per month than I do.
He added: “You have to be satisfied with what you do. And this is what I have done throughout my career and I am very satisfied with it. Even if Federer or Djokovic finish with more Grand Slams than I do, it won’t affect my happiness 10 years from now. “
How is that perspective? Makes you wonder: Does Nadal’s seafront house have views of the Balearic Sea or Walden Pond?
Nadal’s approach to his career, as a personal journey to share with those around him rather than a total crusade for total domination, contradicts the all too common belief in the modern world that whoever dies with the most titles, toys. or treasures wins.
Nadal’s path this year was supposed to be riddled with obstacles. Playing in cooler fall weather, with a new brand of balls that Nadal described as “slow” and “heavy,” he didn’t think about being able to use his topspin forehand to its fullest potential. Then there was residual rust in his game, a by-product of not having practiced from mid-March through May while staying in Mallorca with his family during the worst stretch of the coronavirus pandemic.
“What you need is the right energy to accept everything, right?” Nadal said last week. “That’s what I’m doing. Just staying positive, knowing that the conditions are not perfect for me, maybe not for others. “
Rafa’s Tao is not just talk, as Nadal demonstrated by not losing a set in his first six games.
It was easy? Nadal just made it look that way. Did you harbor doubts? Of course.
“If you have no doubts, it probably means you are being arrogant,” Nadal told Jon Wertheim in a “60 Minutes” interview that aired in January.
Nadal’s apprehension was on high alert in the third set of their semifinal on Friday when Diego Schwartzman forced a tiebreaker. Nadal responded by accumulating seven points in a row for a 6-3, 6-3, 7-6 (0) victory.
“You have to suffer,” Nadal said with a shrug. “You cannot pretend to be in a Roland Garros final without suffering. That’s what happened there. But I found a way, right?
Elina Svitolina, who retired in the quarterfinals, said Nadal’s wisdom is to see the bigger picture and not just the 78-by-27-foot rectangle that is an individual tennis court. Iga Swiatek, who won the women’s final on Saturday, is such an enthusiastic student of Nadal that one day she walked up to the field where he was practicing and studied him.
The Tao of Rafa is even more impressive considering that the wisdom is often conveyed in English, which he did not speak 20 years ago. Although he is fluent now, he prefers to conduct interviews in Spanish. Like a crafty returner, Nadal will occasionally change direction, take a question thrown at him in English, and return it in quick Spanish. Consider your English the same way you do your service. A work in progress.
On Friday, Nadal said it was frustrating when he joined the tour in 2001 and was unable to express himself to English-speaking reporters, who asked him questions that passed him like 150 mph services. “I couldn’t understand and answer the questions in the right way,” Nadal said. “Happy that today the situation is a little different. That’s. Here we are. Keep doing our best. “
The Tao of Rafa emphasizes controlling what you can and letting the rest go.
“My goal is to be 100 percent every day,” he said, adding, “To do my best until the end.”
