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ONE is the “King of Clay” and the other is simply called “King James”. Last week, Rafael Nadal and LeBron James defeated their attackers.
For the 34-year-old Spaniard, the racetrack was in Paris and the tournament was the French Open. The skeptics were many. They said Nadal was slow and rusty. The week before, in the only event he had joined since March, Nadal lost to a player he had never lost to before: Diego Schwartzman. In that loss, the 5-foot-7 Argentine hit and beat the Spaniard.
Nadal, no matter if he won the Roland Garros trophy 12 mind-blowing times, he was not the favorite to win in Paris.
On his way to the final was a player who had lost 14 of the last 18 times they played.
Novak Djokovic was undefeated this 2020. Well, the record said “37-1” but that only blemish was not because he lost in the normal sense; was disqualified for hitting a linesman at the US Open. The 33-year-old Serbian owned the game to beat Rafa. As he uncorks his two-fist backhand, the ball would pass to Rafa in a cross exchange. Novak’s forehand would force Rafa to play defense while hitting that Wilson ball down the line.
At the 2020 Australian Open, the rivals played the final. Novak swept to defeat the embarrassed Rafa, who won just eight games.
Would Paris be a repeat of Melbourne?
Goran Ivanisevic, who is part of Novak’s coaching staff, said this before the final: “Nadal has no chance in these conditions, on this clay and with Novak, who has gotten into his head.” Est-ce vrai? (Is this true?)
The Djokovic-Nadal final seven days ago was like a heavyweight championship fight. Experts rated it as the most transcendent fight between the two. We were expecting a five-set game that would exceed 309 minutes. We expected the sweat to ooze out and soak up Nadal’s light blue Nike; for the winners to beat Djokovic’s Head Graphene 360+. We expected Nadal to pulverize “le terre battue” (red clay) and for Djokovic to dribble a dozen times before serving a 190 km / h service to outwit and beat his tormentor. We saw the opposite. Instead of a shootout, where one shoots an ace and the other takes a beating, we saw a demolition job.
First set, six loves.
Second set, six-two.
I have seen hundreds of Nadal matches, including, in person, his gold medal at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, and I must conclude that those were two of his most confident and dominant outfits. He zoomed in to retrieve a Novak drop shot. He hurried and charged with each short ball. He stepped back to hit an inside-out forehand with 4,291 topspin revolutions. He sped up while Novak looked dejected and grumpy.
In the 3rd set, we envision an additional beating when Nadal broke out of the lead, 3-2. But the warrior in Djokovic emerged to resurrect his game. It soon died out.
The final score: 6-0, 6-2, 7-5.
Less than 12 hours later, after the King of Clay demonstrated his supremacy in Paris, it was the triumph in Orlando of another King: LeBron James.
(To be continue)
