Said @MiguelSeabra, Eurosport commentator and journalist, "if [Nadal] would imitate this [Wozniacki] full body cramp, people would think he were a breakdancer."
Also via Seabra, consider this Live fra Bremenclip. The sketch comedy show is Denmark's answer to Saturday Night Live, and the lead actress is a dead ringer for Woz. It has appearances also by "Piotr" and Caro's brother and mother, Patrik and Anna.
As noted by the New York Times' Karen Crouse, an ace observer of U.S. Open goings-on, Rafa spoke to the physical limitations of being a top-rung tennis star in his new book, Rafa: “Playing sports is a good thing for ordinary people; sport played at the professional level is not good for your health. It pushes your body to limits that human beings are not naturally equipped to handle.”
Crouse herself sounded skeptical of Nadal's health, saying his body's startling shutdown revealed that his positive body language up to that point was not "convincing." Indeed, Rafa's body betrayed his poker hand. Embedded in the last paragraph of her article, Crouse wrote that he was in high spirits and winky with dozens of reporters and cameras in the room.
It's a dicey proposition to voice disbelief about a player's injury, to more or less call "bull." Regarding people heckle and disrespect Tomas Berdych when he bailed on a tough Janko Tipsarevic match, I tweeted, "Sick when 'fans' boo and yell 'Quitter' at a player when he retires with injury. Prefer he suffer a career ender?" Berdych had a lingering shoulder injury that felled him in Cincinnati just two weeks earlier as well. From personal experience, post-match cramping can shoot up one's leg out of the blue, causing him to shoot up out of a seat and stand up straight or, in Nadal's case, be rendered all but immobile.
All denizens of the tennis world would be wise to pause before waxing critical or poking in ill-fated jest. Words matter. Words tank. Words cramp.
—Jonathan Scott (@jonscott9)
