The Unified Theory of Rafa

Can a match be at once shocking and predictable? Dustin Brown’s 7-5, 3-6, 6-4, 6-4 second-round win over Rafael Nadal was a little bit of both.

We knew that the man known as Dreddy Tennis had won their only previous meeting, on grass, a year ago. And we could see, right from his first no-look drop-volley winner, that he was going to be a dangerous opponent for Nadal today. Yet a Brown win on Centre Court, over the course of three-out-of-five sets, still felt like a long shot. At some point Dreddy would have to come down to earth, Rafa would have to rise from the ashes, and we would all remember why one of them has been ranked No. 1, and the other is ranked No. 102.

But when it was over and No. 102 had won, it no longer felt so surprising. In hindsight, the fact that Brown is so low on the totem pole should have been a sign. He’s the fourth straight player ranked No. 100 or lower, after Lukas Rosol, Steve Darcis, and Nick Kyrgios, to beat Nadal at Wimbledon. More than that, Brown is 6’5”, has a bullet serve, a two-handed backhand, an ability to attack, a penchant for playing quickly, and, on this day, absolutely nothing to lose. That’s a recipe for a Rafa-killer.

“I lost,” a downcast Nadal said afterward. “Sad, today, for that, obviously...Good moments, bad moments. Obviously today is a bad moment for me.”

Some said that it was the most disappointed they’d ever seen Rafa. I didn’t think that as I watched him. His reaction reminded me of his reactions to his last three losses at Wimbledon: Immediate disappointment in losing to a much-lower-ranked player was mixed with a growing resignation that his best years at this, the tournament he most wanted to win when he was young, are behind him. Today he sounded that note of resignation directly.

“I don’t know if I will be back to the level of 2008 or 2010, 2007, 2006, or 2011,” Nadal said, making a disordered reference to the years when he reached the final. “I played five times here the last day, and had the trophy back home two times, so it’s not too bad.”

Nadal vowed that he’ll be “working harder than ever” to regain his old form, both at Wimbledon and in general.

“Life continues,” he said with a bit of a shrug, “my career too. I have to keep going.”

Then he tried a joke. “If you want the house [where he’s staying in Wimbledon],” he said, “it’s gonna be free tomorrow.”

As Nadal makes another early exit from London, we’re left, from what I can see, with three different interpretations of this defeat and what it means for his future. I’ll take them one at a time, starting with the most optimistic and ending with the most apocalyptic.

Nadal said that, unlike in 2012 and 2013, he was physically ready to play at Wimbledon this year, and that nothing hindered him the way his knees had then.

Instead, as he described what went wrong against Brown, he kept circling back to two shots: The serve and the forehand. Statistically, his serve wasn’t bad. He hit nine aces, made 72 percent of first balls, and won 69 percent of those points. His percentage on second serves was low—46 percent—but that can be partially chalked up to Brown’s ultra-aggressiveness and Rafa’s subpar baseline game. The most damaging thing about Nadal’s serve were his three double faults; they all seemed to come at crucial, uncharacteristic moments.

But the root of the problem, as it has been for most of this season, is the forehand. This is Nadal’s essential shot, and while he can look good on it for stretches, he tends to lose confidence in it quickly, and at the wrong times. He cited a series of forehand misses in his presser, and concluded, in that stoical way of his, “You miss one, you lose confidence, you miss another one.”

The miss that stuck out to me came when Brown served at 3-2 in the third set, with the match still very much in the balance. Brown went up 40-0, but Rafa came back to make it 40-30. On that point, he timed his return well, and had an open court for a forehand pass. In the past, he would have drilled that shot and possibly come back to break. This time he sent the forehand long.

If Nadal can fix his forehand, and make it what it was, will he be OK? His health, for once, is fine. He’s only 29, five years younger than Federer, who is still No. 2 in the world. And Nadal has spent virtually the entire last decade ranked in the Top 3. Even when he lost early at Wimbledon in 2013, to Darcis, he finished the season No. 1. There’s no reason to panic now, is there?

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Nadal’s success at Wimbledon was a surprise to most. In 2008, he became the first Spanish man to win the tournament since Manuel Santana in 1967. His playing style—heavy topspin, a predilection for defense, and a relatively ordinary serve—had rarely been a winning formula on grass in the past. Yet Rafa won the event twice and reached the final five times, by moving up in the court, flattening out his serve and his strokes, and dreaming big. Nadal also, as he said last year, managed to pull out a lot of tight sets and matches at Wimbledon in those days, the types of sets and matches he hasn’t been pulling out more recently.

From 2006 to 2011, the higher bounce on the All England grass seemed to have given Rafa an opportunity that it had denied past clay-courters. Since then, though, the grass has taken that opportunity back with a vengeance. It may not be as slick or bumpy as it was in the 90s, but it still rewards flat shots, strong serves, and go-for-broke tennis. That’s what all of Nadal’s opponents here have been throwing at him, and even his victories have been hard-fought. In 2014, he squeaked past Martin Klizan and Rosol (even Mikhail Kukushkin pushed him) before losing to Kyrgios. In every case, they stepped forward and swung freely. This year Brown followed the same template, and made it look easy.

Now we can see just how unlikely, and impressive, Nadal’s Wimbledon success from 2006 to 2011 really was. He could only master that foreign surface for so long, and judging from his words today, at some level he knows it.

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Yet Nadal's struggles over the past year haven't only come on grass. Last month, after his first-round win at the French Open, he said something about his opponent, Quentin Halys, that I thought was curious at the time:

“He played obviously with some mistakes,” Rafa said, “but when you want to risk on every single ball, then the mistakes are there. You know, the tennis is moving that way. Younger, aggressive. And the tour in general are moving to hit the ball stronger and quicker, going for winners all the time. So when he wants to play like this and he puts the balls in, just I cannot do nothing.”

I don't think I’d heard Nadal speculate about the game’s evolution before, or where it might be going after he’s retired. Was he worried? It sounded a little like what every older player says about the next generation. “Kids these days just close their eyes and bash the ball; in our day, we had to construct points.”

By the end of the tournament, though, after Stan Wawrinka had won it, I wondered if Nadal had a point. Wawrinka obviously isn’t the next generation, but in Paris he became one of the few who guys who has broken down Novak Djokovic’s defenses at a big event. Stan did the same to Rafa a couple of weeks earlier on clay in Rome.

Wawrinka, Nishikori, Berdych, Raonic, Kyrgios, Thiem, Sock, del Potro if he returns: All of these guys aim for the first strike, and can produce winners from anywhere. Many of them have given Nadal trouble over the last year. Dustin Brown, by his own admission, swung for the fences today, with no fear, the same way Kyrgios did in 2014 and Rosol did in 2012.

The game evolves, and it will evolve past Nadal one day. Maybe Rafa is starting to see that or feel that, and finding it harder to combat it with the weapons he has, and the strokes he learned 20 years ago.

For my own part, I still believe Nadal has more major titles in him, and another run up the rankings—he has slumped before and recovered. But this was the first time I’ve seen a healthy Rafa take a very bad loss, and thought that we should have seen it coming.