How much difference does clay make, exactly? The ball comes in a millisecond more slowly, and players who know how to slide can cover a few extra inches of ground; but does that even begin to explain the change that comes over Rafael Nadal when he sets foot on the stuff? When you switch from clay to hard courts and back again, do you experience a seismic shift in your game? Are you unbeatable on one, but not on the other? I’m guessing you answered no.
But then, one might respond, you aren't Rafael Nadal. And very few people, if any, have ever seemed at home on any surface the way he does on red dirt. To understand just how at home, you only needed to watch the first point of his first clay match of 2008, against Mario Ancic in Monte Carlo. Ancic hit three strong ground strokes to maneuver Nadal deep into his backhand corner. On the last one, though, Nadal extricated himself from trouble with a sharp crosscourt backhand. The tide of the point turned, and he ended up winning it with a backhand drop shot that Ancic could only wave at from the baseline. I thought, “What does it take to take one point from this guy on clay?” Ancic would go on to win six in the first set.
After that match, I declared, partially in jest, that Nadal would go through the clay season without dropping a set. While that seemed virtually impossible on paper, I had trouble imagining how anyone was going to get six games from him. The prediction held true until Sunday in Barcelona, when David Ferrer snuck a 6-4 win in between two 6-1 drubbings from Nadal. This wasn’t too surprising: Ferrer has beaten Nadal three times and held three set points on him in Monte Carlo. In that match, Ferrer suffered a major brain cramp at the wrong moment. Their final in Barcelona was more typical, and more illustrative of the differences between the two Top-5-ranked Spaniards.
Nadal began in peak form, going up 4-0 in about 15 minutes. He was hitting his forehand extraordinarily deep and at full speed, and he gave Ferrer fits by hooking it away from his two-handed backhand. Nadal even began to flatten his backhand and dictate with it, a sign that’s he’s feeling unusually secure. Still, it's the forehand more than anything else that elevates Nadal over this particular opponent. As good as Ferrer’s is, he just can’t match Nadal’s safety zone on that side; because of the topspin he gets on the ball, Rafa can aim it deeper and closer to the lines with less worry. He did that through the first set today; Ferrer’s only answer was to swing harder and more desperately. Whichever side Ferrer was on, he looked like he was playing into the wind.
That wind shifted suddenly in the first game of the second set. Nadal suffered a mental hiccup and let his anxiety get the better of him for one quick moment. He stopped a point after a close call, thinking Ferrer’s shot had been out. It was in, and Nadal was rattled by his mistake. He dumped two backhands into the net and was broken. When a player stops a point in error, he’s betraying an extraneous level of hopefulness. At that point, Nadal could taste the title and another win over a major rival. He just got ahead of himself for a split-second, and it cost him.
It turned out to be a window just big enough for Ferrer to sneak through and back into the match. He must be credited for a Nadal-like tenacity, as he somehow managed to grab the initiative from his opponent and set up his own forehand for blistering down-the-line winners. After knocking one off to go up 4-2, Ferrer let out his own “Vamos!” and fired the extra ball in his pocket across the net. Even when Nadal came back to break for 4-4, Ferrer didn’t cave; he steeled himself again for the final two games.
There isn’t much to separate the two Spaniards. Ferrer is a more earth-bound, lunch-bucket version of Nadal. He has none of Rafa’s flash, either during points or between them. Even the way Ferrer walks—stalks, really—around court could be described as “no frills." He moves toward the ball without distraction or delay, gets it, moves back to the baseline, and tosses it up to serve. Ferrer makes single-mindedness visible.
There are differences between these players, of course, and two of them are crucial. One, as mentioned, is the forehand. To hit winners, Ferrer must risk more, and it eventually caught up with him in the third set. Trying to stay on top of the points, he drilled a series of forehands into the net. Nadal, whose shots dive toward the lines, never has to worry about this. The other difference is that Ferrer, for all of his single-mindedness, has a self-lacerating streak. He’s not a hothead by any means, but he did berate himself angrily at different points in this match, and his negativity began to feed on itself near the end. Nadal, by contrast, while he hates to lose and will throw his arms up or grimace in disappointment, never succumbs to his anger or throws away a point because of it—it’s hard to imagine him even bouncing his racquet on the court the way almost every other pro (except, tellingly, Roger Federer) does now and then. He never makes the sport harder for himself. Near the end of the match, Nadal flubbed an easy swing volley, shanking it 10 feet long. In the replay afterward, you could see his embarrassed, childlike reaction, a sort of facial version of “D’oh!” By the time he was back at the baseline, it was forgotten.
Of course, you might not be that angry if you could win 99 percent of your clay-court matches. But maybe it's his unique lack of anger that's allowed Nadal to do that in the first place.