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Nadal's bust in London leaves big questions

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Updated Nov 28, 2009 8:03 PM ET
     
 

LONDON

Thanks to the quirks of the round robin system, Novak Djokovic won his third match here in the ATP World Tour Finals but still failed to qualify for the knock-out semifinal round because Nikolay Davydenko defeated Robin Soderling 7-6 (4), 4-6, 6-3 — a result that puts both the Russian and the Swede into the weekend. But whereas Djokovic will head home to Monte Carlo well satisfied with his end-of-season push, having won titles in Basel and Paris, the world No. 2 Rafael Nadal ended a disastrous visit to London with three losses and no sets won. He actually played a bit better today against Djokovic but was still no match for the Serb indoors and went down 7-6 (5), 6-3. "Rafa on the Rocks!" cried the London Independent, and it is hard to view the Spaniard's game in anything but sinking mode. No tournament win since Rome in May, not a single set won in his last eight meetings with opponents ranked in the top eight — this is a desperate record for a man who was being touted by Andre Agassi and others as capable of winning the Career Slam after he captured the Australian Open last February. Polite, honest and charming to the last, Nadal was still telling us how he was not that disappointed at his poor showing here because the court did not suit him, he had not been playing well enough to win the title, and the last six months of the year have never been his profitable period of the campaign. But all through his dissertations this week there have been little give-away signs of what is going on inside his head. Basically, he is no longer thinking like a champion. "Decisive moments; this necessary calm, for example, the forehand at 6-5 in the tiebreak, was (an) easy ball. And when you are playing good, that wouldn't be a problem, that ball. But, you know, I made the mistake; I lose the set and with that set, the match." This was Nadal owning up to a worrying lack of confidence. In his pomp, there was not a ball that Rafa did not think he could put back in play, often turning defense into attack with the venomous top spin he was able to impart on the ball. Now he seems to be moving a fraction slower, and the ball is not rotating as fast. Opponents see openings and possibilities they never saw before. This, of course, happens to all great champions in their declining years, but Nadal is still only 23. The problem is his knees are much older than that. Although he denies that he is not as muscular as he was and insists his weight has remained the same, it certainly does not look that way to the naked eye. Nadal laughs it off by saying that he looked more muscular in his old sleeveless shirt, but there are whispers that the de-bulking is all about taking weight off those knees.
The Davis Cup final against the Czech Republic next weekend in Barcelona — which will be played on clay, his favorite surface — will energize Nadal but he is already looking past that to 2010. "This tournament gives me the opportunity to see what I have to do to play better next year," he said. "First of all, work. Still working a little bit more with the serve. And a little bit more control of all the shots, no? The other thing is to play more aggressive. For example, I have to be more aggressive on the first shot." Nadal talks of work because it was the workaholic in him that made the kid from Majorca into a champion. But one wonders why he needs to play an exhibition in Abu Dhabi in January and then an indoor event in Rotterdam immediately after the Australian Open. Surely the less time he spends on hard courts, the better chance his knees have of recovering or, at least, of not getting worse. Maybe he is in denial about his knees because he tends to cite fatigue as the prime reason for his slump in form. "Finish battery," he laughs. "I need to charge a lot. Sometimes you have to buy other ones. That's what I'm going to do next year. Charge and practice hard." Richard Evans, who commentated at Wimbledon on BBC Radio for 20 years, has been covering tennis since the 1960s and has reported on more than 150 Grand Slams. He is the author of 15 books, including the official history of the Davis Cup and the unofficial history of the modern game in "Open Tennis." He lives in Florida but is still on the tour 20 weeks in the year.

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