Nadal, the man who refuses to bow to anyone

HOW can you look vulnerable when you're a break up in the fifth set? Answer: by playing Rafael Nadal.

HOW can you look vulnerable when you're a break up in the fifth set? Answer: by playing Rafael Nadal.

I was pondering that question in the Court Philippe Chatrier in Paris just a few weeks ago. Novak Djokovic was leading 4-2 in the final set in the semi-finals of the French Open, but it was clear to me and to everyone else that one break was never going to be enough.

If you want to beat Nadal, you have to beat him at least half a dozen times, and all at the same time. That's what lies at the heart of Nadal's game, Nadal's nature. It's a truth that you can find at every level of analysis, a trait you find when you examine a point, a match, a career.

So here's my conclusion: don't get into a fight with him. You'd have to kill him.

And here's the great mystery of it all: how can a man who stands so far away be so intimidating? If you want to win a tennis match, the first step is to take control of the court. To seize space and time. To own the place. That's a psychological truism of the sport, and also basic tennis strategy. You make your opponent feel like an interloper on his own side of the net. With weight and depth of shot, with reach and power and angle and spin, you crowd him out of his own space.

But that's not Nadal's way. You want the court? Help yourself. Nadal gives it all to you. You've got your own side of the net, and he gives you all of the other side to put the ball in. Where's he gone? He's miles away, somewhere near the stop-netting, tripping over the ballboys and the towels and the umpires' chairs. It seems that you can do what you like. You're up against an absentee landlord.

But that's not how it works out. You've helped yourself to the court but there's no triumph in it. The ball keeps coming back to you. Then comes the dizzying, dismaying understanding: your winners aren't winners any more. Your best shot comes back to you. It's like trying to knock over the wobblyman in the nursery.

Let's look at a characteristic point from that fifth set. Towards the end of a long and convoluted rally, Djokovic hit three successive winners. Or they should have been winners, three shots that came singing out of the sweet spot to find the edge of the line right in the place where Nadal wasn't. Certainly they'd have been winners against anyone else. But each one came back.

No, it's not like playing the wall. Nadal isn't passive-defensive. He's aggressive-defensive. It's something to do with that forehand, something to do with top spin. He rolls his racket into the ball with ferocity, the ball is struck with full power, it's steaming well beyond the baseline but no, it dips, lands in, then kicks like Eric Cantona. I've read that most players put 3,000 revolutions per minute into a forehand top spin; Nadal is closer to 5,000. That's one hell of an edge.

There are three ways of failing when Nadal puts you under that sort of pressure. In this case, Djokovic was pushed into a tiny error, and he caught the net. A couple of inches higher, though, and the ball would have landed in - but well short. In this second case, Nadal comes in, take the ball high on the bounce and buries it. And in the third case, you are so frustrated by Nadal's tenacity that you try to beat him with something even better than your best shot. And inevitably miss.

And that in a microcosm, in a point, is Nadal. It's not just that he has the best defence. He is also the best ever at making defence an act of aggression, either by turning defence into attack or by forcing - rather than merely waiting for - the error. More than any other player I've seen, Nadal forces the unforced error.

So let's look at Nadal in the context of a match, rather than a point. And he shows the same thing time and again. Against Djokovic in that semi-final in Paris, he was two sets to one up, but lost the fourth to a brilliantly resurgent Djokovic. The momentum was all against him. The break of serve in the fifth made that quite clear. But it still wasn't enough. Nadal had been defeated but he hadn't been defeated enough. So Nadal took the match and went on to a straight-sets victory over David Ferrer in the final.

Ferrer is at present ranked fourth to Nadal's fifth. Yeah, right.

But that's because we now need to look at Nadal at the level of career. It's a fact that he's wrecking himself every time he steps on to a tennis court. He's had tendinitis in both knees. What do you expect if you spend your life running like a madman from side to side? Last season he was out for seven months trying to get his knees fixed.

So the rankings system gave up on him because he wasn't playing.

Meanwhile, we Brits also gave up on him a little, not least because it was nice to think that Andy Murray had one fewer god to beat every time he set out on the grand-slam trail.

But Nadal did not give up on Nadal. Not, as I think we've established, his way. He made a comeback that first stuttered and spluttered, then burst into flame, with victories on the clay in Barcelona, Madrid and Rome before he cleaned up in Paris.

So now he's back at Wimbledon, where he won in 2008 and 2010. Grass is easier on the knees than some surfaces. No one is writing him off. He is seeded to meet Roger Federer in the quarter-finals and, if he wins, the possibility of Murray in the semis. How much longer can he carry on? He played each match in Paris as if it were his last, but that's nothing new. He'll play Wimbledon the same way. Savour every day of it.

The Times