This week at TENNIS.com we’ve been celebrating Rafael Nadal and remembering Monica Seles. While the Spaniard just recorded his 100th win in 101 clay-court matches, the 15th anniversary of Seles’ stabbing in Hamburg also passed on April 30. I remember where I was when I heard about it—it was that kind of story, perhaps the only time that tennis has been that kind of story, one where people called their friends (the Internet wasn’t standard office equipment in 1993, if you can believe it) to ask: “Did you hear…?” I was working an awful office-drone job in Manhattan and was killing time in a friend’s cubicle when he answered the phone. He listened and then immediately blurted, in total surprise, to no one in particular: “Monica Seles was just stabbed.” The words didn’t compute for either of us.
With these stories and memories in my mind, I went to the tennis history book, now known as You Tube, and came back with a few illustrative clips about both Seles and Nadal. (No stabbing footage, though; does any exist?) But this being You Tube, I also came back with a few irrelevant, but irresistible, moments from the past.
The clip at the top of this page is from Seles’ match against Gabriela Sabatini at the 1992 French Open. The telling part for me comes at the very beginning. I’d forgotten how eager Seles always was to receive serve, and you can see it here in the way she bangs on the clay with her racquet as if to say, “Come on, give me the ball!”
Click here for clips from the 1992 Seles-Steffi Graf French final, one of the best of their rivalry (Seles won 8-6 in the third set). Seles wills her way past one of the most willful players in history. Her look during the match is an indomitable one, but when she holds the trophy she couldn’t seem nicer—she's the nice girl who just got what she wanted. It makes me think of an old Rolling Stones song, “Complicated”: “She looks so simple in her way/And does the same thing every day/But she’s dedicated/To having her own way.”
The third Seles clip that stood out was from her famous win over Jennifer Capriati in the U.S. Open semifinals in 1991. This was another work of will and indomitable shotmaking—check out the down the line backhand that ends the 30-15, 5-4 point. As Tony Trabert says, “cannon shots now.” I remember thinking that this loss would crush Capriati and affect her for a long time.
As for Rafa, let’s start by getting a sense of clay-tennis perspective with this clip of one point from the 1978 French Open final, between Bjorn Borg (what would a You Tube roundup be without the Angelic Assassin?) and Guillermo Vilas. Hopefully you have a few minutes, because the rally last 86 shots. As the clip's poster, Kevin Rosero, says in his write-up, Borg almost comes in on the 39th shot, but backs up. When he finally does come in, he forces a passing-shot error from Vilas. He probably wished he’d just done that the first time.
Two other things stick out to me here: (1) Borg’s tremendous balance, which makes his movement and strokes look almost casual—he always has an extra split-second to set up and direct the ball where he wants; and (2) how straight up and down Vilas remains through his swing, which seems to rob him of depth on the backhand.
It was a different world, with different racquets, technique, grunts, gestures, and even sliding styles—there's more of it now—27 years later when Nadal won his first French Open, over Mariano Puerta. This was an exciting final, and the highlights above retain that excitement. Is it just me, or was Nadal a little lighter and faster then? He lost the first set of that match in a tiebreaker after being ahead, and I remember thinking that this would doom most players. It was Nadal’s first French Open, but he had come in as the favorite and had to deal with that pressure for two weeks. In the semis, he’d beaten Federer in the most-hyped match of recent memory and could have been forgiven for having a letdown against Puerta. And now he’d lost an opening set that was in his grasp. So how did Nadal react? He came out and won the second set 6-3 and the third 6-1. In these highlights, watch for his get on a Puerta drop volley; Nadal starts from behind the baseline but still tracks it down and wins the point. Then he dances.
Nadal has now won 100 of 101 clay matches, but I’m betting he won’t match Chris Evert’s record from 1973 to 1981, when she went 197-1 on the surface (those numbers don’t sound real, do they?). Here she is in her early, wood-racquet incarnation slicing up Martina Navratilova at the 1975 French Open. Love the way she gets back for the overhead at the baseline; there’s something very natural about her footwork and body control.
You Tube is like a doll that opens up to reveal smaller versions of itself. Click on one thing and you’re linked to a dozen moments you’d forgotten about. I’ll finish with two that came up accidentally for me today. The first is a kind of stoner version of Yannick Noah’s win at Roland Garros in 1983—the music choices on many of these clips are bizarre, but this one is cool. The last one, below, is Steffi Graf’s famous answer to a proposal of marriage on Centre Court. I guess she had a sense of humor all along.
Finally, I’ve been alerted to the fact that a documentary about junior boys’ tennis from 2005, Unstrung, will be aired on ESPN Classic on Saturday night at 8:00. It wasn’t a bad year to follow the kids around; Sam Querrey and Donald Young figure prominently in it.