For over two hours, the 35-year-old with a battered body held together with tape and sheer will, had been pummeled by an opponent a decade younger than him. When Rafael Nadal won his first Grand Slam (the first of an unbelievable thirteen French Opens) in 2005, Daniil Medvedev was nine years old. Now, almost seventeen years later and in the final of another Grand Slam, Medvedev was ruthlessly and systematically dismantling the great Rafael Nadal piece by piece, while the crowd roared its contemptuous disapproval.
Having secured the first two sets with relative ease, when Medvedev manoeuvred himself into holding three break points while leading 3-2 in the third set, he must have felt he’d done enough. He must have imagined reaching out and touching the trophy; holding it aloft to needle the Melbourne tennis aficionados in one final act of reprisal. Grand Slam finals are partisan affairs and the vociferous support the crowds lend to their favourites adds to the atmosphere. But this Australian Open final was different. There were pockets of support for Medvedev (the camerapersons took pains to pick them out, perhaps to break the monotony of the ubiquitous Spanish flags) but the majority of those present were not just cheering for Nadal; they were goading Medvedev into errors and gloating over the chances he missed. Medvedev had endured a testy relationship with the spectators throughout the tournament and during the final, it seemed he was playing against not one (super)human but hundreds of “Empty Brains”. (His words not mine).
I have always been awed by the physical and mental strength tennis demands. It is an exceedingly lonely sport, perhaps more so than any other. Sure, players have an entourage and support teams but in the moments that truly matter, when they are out on the court, they are brutally alone. Every mistake, every misstep belongs to them and becomes a memory they carry forever.
Last year, when Naomi Osaka withdrew from the French Open and spoke about mental health issues, it sparked a conversation that was long overdue. Athletes are fetishized for their physical prowess and mental endurance; to a degree where it becomes inconceivable to believe they could be plagued by depression, doubt or a sense of ennui1. After all, aren’t these ailments the preserve of the weak-willed, the anti-thesis of athletic excellence? There have been past incidents of athletes talking about their mental health struggles (Marcus Trescothick, for instance) but these were one-offs and could never overcome the stigma associated with this issue2. Naomi Osaka helped open the floodgates. Soon after, Simone Biles, one of the greatest gymnasts of all time, withdrew from certain events in the Tokyo Olympics citing mental health issues and drawing even more attention to an oft-forgotten fact: athletes striving for perfection are also human. All of 24 years, Simone Biles had to deal with the pressure of knowing that the world expected her to sweep Olympic gold medals. When I was 24, I would panic if I had to order vegetables and would google the Hindi/Marathi word for pumpkin3. The courage displayed by Osaka and Biles has resulted in a marked change in the manner in which mental health in sports is perceived by athletes and fans alike. In fact, Biles’ decision to withdraw from her Olympic events was supported by Nadal in an interview and he spoke about his own methods of dealing with stress and anxiety. Methods that helped him claw his way back into a match when everybody had written him off.
I must admit that I am a casual tennis viewer. I rarely watch any tennis beyond the occasional Grand Slam final or semi-final. The good thing about this is that I find it easier to remember the titanic clashes when the Big Three of the sports have collided over the past few years. The 2019 Wimbledon final between Roger Federer and Novak Djokovic, for instance, was a particularly painful event. The world (except for Serbia and anti-vaxxers) was willing Federer to win but he infuriatingly squandered two championship points, and ultimately lost to Novak Djokovic. The other match etched in my memory is the 2008 Wimbledon final in which Nadal beat Federer - mostly because it cost me a job.
I was in college at the time and in the middle of the campus recruitment process. I had cleared the written evaluation round and been selected for a job interview where I was asked the usual questions: “What legal subjects do you find interesting”, “Are you willing to sleep in office or not sleep at all?”, and so on. Near the end, the interviewers asked me if I had any interests outside of law. The correct response would have been: (Bewildered Look) “Sir, what is this outside of law thing? I have never heard of it. My life is law, sir.” Sadly, I was young and reckless. I launched into talking about my love for football and then veered into describing the ebb and flow of the 2008 Wimbledon final in excruciating detail. When I finished, the interviewers pursed their lips. “You spoke about tennis with more passion than you spoke about law”, they grumbled, as if genuinely surprised how anything could be more interesting than indirect taxation laws. I smiled weakly and left. Obviously, I didn’t get hired.
The 2022 Australian Open final will now be added to this hallowed list of matches. This match was always going to have a heightened sense of drama with Nadal chasing a twenty-first Grand Slam win. Djokovic, Federer and Nadal have all been tied on twenty Grand Slams each, and the last time one of them (Djokovic) tried to break ahead, it was Medvedev who played spoilsport. The fates had now conspired to again cast Medvedev as the one who could thwart Nadal’s quest to create history. And for a long time, it seemed like he would.
Medvedev was dominant in the first two sets; striking the ball with his particular brand of gangly grace, limbs askew but in perfect balance. Nadal was battling just to keep afloat and as the minutes wore on, the same thought crept into the consciousness of everyone watching: how long could a 35-year-old be expected to compete? At 0-40 down in the sixth game of the third set, if Nadal had laid down arms nobody would have blamed him. His legacy would have remained untarnished. Articles would have been written about how unbelievable it was for him to have even made it to the final. Most people would have found that acceptable. Nadal, of course, is not most people.
From holding on by his fingertips in the third set, Nadal somehow dragged Medvedev to a fifth set and the Russian looked as bemused as the rest of us upon finding himself there. Even more remarkably, Nadal looked fresher and seemed to have more fuel in his tank than the rapidly depleting Russian. To be fair, Medvedev rallied in the fifth set but by then a feeling of inevitability had descended upon the court and begun to coalesce around Nadal. When Nadal came to the net and hit a backhand slice at championship point, all of Medvedev’s 198 centimetres couldn’t help him reach it in time. And just like that, it was over. History, and more importantly, folklore had been created.
Since Sunday, I have been thinking about what Nadal may have said to motivate himself, to not lose hope when all hope was lost, but it’s beyond me. And I think that’s okay. Not everyone can have the force of will to overcome insurmountable odds. We don’t have to put ourselves in the shoes of elite athletes and try to do what they do. But we can learn from their example and push our own limits to achieve our own goals. And if that goal is the resolve to sit on a couch for five hours and watch in admiration as they scurry around on our TV screens, then so be it. After all, what good is greatness without an audience?
Athletes are also expected to hold reasonable views about a pandemic and vaccination, but we all know how that turned out.
In this New York Times article, Robert Soderling (a two-time French Open finalist) talks about how he “went from being able to play a five-set match on clay to not being able to walk up the stairs.”
Such a lovely piece. P.S. - I love jhinge.
Hello, I am in your Substack Go group, can you reply to me with an email address when you get this message please. Thank you, Tracy