It was an unhappy day, an unhappy week, for Rafael Nadal in Doha. He was suffering from a fever, and today, at 0-2 in the second set against Nikolay Davydenko, he simply sat down on his sideline chair in protest over the whole thing. He slumped, threw his hands in the air, and told the tour’s medical officials that in the third game he had “started to feel terrible.” They told him there was nothing they could do for him, so Nadal frowned and said, “OK, I’ll try some more,” got up, and listlessly lost the next three games.
We’ll see if this is an isolated illness, or whether Nadal is going to suffer longer-term consequences for an off-season that lasted, by his estimate, “three or four days.” It’s January 7 and he’s already played two exo matches and a tournament, and he played doubles in Doha as well, where he is/was in the final today. Now he’ll have 10 days before the year starts in earnest in Melbourne.
It should also be noted that while, as the Eurosport announcers said, “this wasn’t the real Nadal,” Davydenko continues to have success against him on hard courts. He beat Rafa here last season, and has beaten him multiple times on the surface over the years. After an injury-shortened 2010, the man who was a hot pick at last year’s Australian Open appears to finally be rounding into his old form. He has a good game for whichever Nadal shows up: He can take the ball on the rise, angle it away from Nadal’s two-handed backhand, and make it move more quickly through the court than the Spaniard. All of which he could easily do again were they to meet in Melbourne. Davydenko beat his opponent in tomorrow’s final, Roger Federer, in the semis here in 2010; he might give Federer, who is in very good form at the moment, a run again.
—Steve Tignor