NEW YORK—Rafael Nadal easily navigated another pothole on his road to history on Sunday, a history with which he has not quite come to grips.
Besides the best game in tennis at the moment, the Spanish star had everything going for him in his third-round US Open match on the Arthur Ashe Stadium court. Skies were blue, the temperature was perfect, the puffs of wind were more comfort than pain.
Plus, his opponent, 42nd-ranked Gilles Simon of France, was present, but elsewhere. Two days ago, his girlfriend gave birth in France to their first child, four weeks early, and Simon acknowledged afterward that he was more interested in seeing his new son, Timothy, than more of Nadal’s forehand. He lost the first two sets, 6-4, 6-4, and said, “In the third set, I was already on the plane.”
Simon’s understandable lack of resistance in a 6-2 third set probably mattered little, anyway. Nadal is the No. 1 player in the world with reason.
To a game that has been overwhelming to opponents for years—heavy, spinning, high-bouncing ground strokes—he has added an increasingly effective serve. It used to top out around 120 mph. On Sunday, he hit 130 twice.
He is so dominant this year that he has won two majors, the French Open and Wimbledon; and has a 55-7 record and $5,681,738 in winnings—and that’s before the US Open check, likely to be a big one.
Simon represented another day at the office for Nadal, another opponent to pound and break down. We eat cereal for breakfast. Nadal eats guys across the net.
But there is more of a story line here for Nadal than just another victory, more than he cares to admit or ponder. He is four victories away from something very special—his chances of achieving that increasing later in the day when his projected semifinal opponent, fourth seed Andy Murray, was beaten by Stanislas Wawrinka, 6-7 (3), 7-6 (4), 6-3, 6-3.
First, the US Open is the only major event Nadal has not won. Were he to do so, he would become the seventh man in history to win all four at least once, following Fred Perry, Don Budge, Roy Emerson, Rod Laver, André Agassi and Roger Federer. Nine women have done it, including Margaret Court, Billie Jean King, Steffi Graf, Martina Navratilova, Chris Evert and Serena Williams.
They call it the career Grand Slam.
Asked how much he thinks of history as he tries to win this event, Nadal responded quickly: “No, no. I think [only] about the practice tomorrow...it’s very far, the victory of this tournament...I am happy where I’m at, but it is only the fourth round.”
That is the tennis player’s doctrine. They should stamp it on their foreheads. Play them one at a time. Don’t even look at the draw sheet. The future is the next match only. There are no long-term expectations. Don’t even ask about it.
The second part of Nadal’s march to history is that, with a victory, he will become the third person to win all four majors plus an Olympic singles gold medal. The other two? Mr. and Mrs. André Agassi.
Mrs. Agassi, Steffi Graf, won her gold in 1988 in Seoul, the same year she won all four majors. Talk about history. Her Golden Slam may be an unbreakable record. Agassi won his gold in Atlanta in 1996.
This, of course, is a record with several asterisks.
Tennis disappeared from the Olympics after the 1924 Games in Paris, then was not brought back until 1988. That eliminated hundreds of great players. Also, the first of the four majors, the Australian Open, wasn’t contested as a major until 1922 and wasn’t an easy place to get to for decades.
Still, it has been 22 years since Seoul, and only the Agassis have conquered all.
Several others are very close. They are, in order:
Serena Williams, who has two Olympic gold medals—but both in doubles.
Federer, who has an Olympic gold, but also only in doubles.
Justine Henin, who won gold in Athens but is lacking a Wimbledon title despite two trips to the final.
Lindsay Davenport, who won her gold in Atlanta but never won the French.
Venus Williams, who won gold in Sydney in 2000 and has Wimbledon and US Open titles but has lost in the Australian and French finals.
Modern-day men’s gold medalists are Miloslav Mecir in ’88, Marc Rosset in ’92, Agassi in ’96, Yevgeny Kafelnikov in 2000, Nicolas Massu in ’04 and Nadal in ’08. The women are Graf in ’88, Jennifer Capriati in ’92, Davenport in ’96, Venus Williams in 2000, Henin in ’04 and Elena Dementieva in ’08.
Four more victories and Nadal will crash the Agassi party. It will then be André, Steffi and Rafa.
Has kind of a nice ring.
Spain’s reign
The Spanish men have been so dominant at the US Open that they’ve already guaranteed one of them will reach the semifinals.
Six of the 16 men in the fourth round are from Spain. Four make up one corner of the draw, ensuring there will be an all-Spanish quarterfinal.
The six Spanish men in the tournament’s fourth round tie the most for a foreign country since the Open era began in 1968. Australia also had six way back in 1969. It’s the most for any country since the United States had eight in 1995.
“Probably the most difficult tournament for us, no?” top-ranked Rafael Nadal said. “So that is very important news for the Spanish tennis.”
Nadal, eighth seed Fernando Verdasco, No. 10 David Ferrer, No. 23 Feliciano Lopez and unseeded Tommy Robredo won on Sunday to join No. 21 Albert Montanes in the fourth round. Ferrer beat countryman Daniel Gimeno-Traver, 7-6 (2), 6-2, 6-2.
“It’s always nice to see all the Spanish winning and being in the last rounds, no?” said Verdasco, who eliminated 2002 Wimbledon runner-up David Nalbandian of Argentina, 6-2, 3-6, 6-3, 6-2.
Only Nicolas Almagro lost on Sunday, the 14th seed Almagro falling to 20th-seeded American Sam Querrey, 3-6,4- 6, 4-6.
Nadal will face Lopez and Ferrer takes on Verdasco in the Spanish Invitational portion of the bracket.
“I don’t really care whom I’m playing against,” Nadal said, “if they’re all Spaniards.”
“If you need to lose, it’s better to lose against a Spanish player, then at least one guy is going to be there one round more, no?” Verdasco said.
Spain had never advanced more than four men to the US Open fourth round.
Robredo won when Michael Llodra of France retired with the score at 3-6, 7-6 (6), 6-4, 2-1, while Lopez also marched on after Ukraine’s Sergiy Stakhovsky quit at 6-3, 4-0.
“Before we were the best on clay,” Lopez said. “Now we win on grass, on everywhere, no?”
Tough task for Querrey
It’s been seven years since a man from the United States won the country’s most important tennis tournament. Indeed, it’s been that long since an American man won any Grand-Slam singles title.
The 20th-seeded Querrey is all-too-aware of such statistics.
“The average sports fan watches the Grand Slams, and they watch on Saturday and Sunday and the semis and the finals,” said the 22-year-old Querrey, the youngest man left in the field. “That’s what we need to do. We need to get some guys there.”
At the 2009 US Open, no US men reached the quarterfinals for the first time in the history of an event that began in 1881. This time, of 15 Americans that entered the tournament, there are two who are still around for the fourth round—Querrey and No. 19 Mardy Fish—after No. 18 John Isner lost to No. 12 Mikhail Youzhny of Russia, 6-4, 6-7 (7), 7-6 (5), 6-4, despite hitting 33 aces on Sunday night.
Isner, best known for winning the longest match in tennis history at Wimbledon in June, got broken early in each of the first two sets, then was down 5-1 in the second, before making things interesting. But Youzhny came up with one of his five aces to end the third-set tiebreaker, then broke the six-foot-nine Isner again early in the fourth. Youzhny heads to the US Open’s fourth round for the first time since he was a semifinalist in 2006.
Fish will take on No. 3 Novak Djokovic of Serbia in the third round. Querrey never has been to the quarterfinals at a major tournament, nor has Wawrinka.
When Andy Roddick—the American who won the 2003 US Open—briefly dropped to 11th in August, it was the first time since the rankings began in 1973 that there were no US men in the top 10. That alone was enough to cue a new chorus of questions about the state of the game in a nation that produced Pete Sampras and Andre Agassi, Jimmy Connors and John McEnroe.
There is only one American woman left, and it’s seven-time Grand-Slam champion Venus Williams, who struggled with her serve and kept yanking at the hemline of her red, sequin-dotted dress but eventually beat 16th-seeded Shahar Peer of Israel, 7-6 (3), 6-3, to reach the quarterfinals in New York for the 10th time.
Williams put 48 percent of her first serves in, and was broken three times. She wasted her first six set points in the opening tiebreaker. And yet she improved to 6-0 against Peer. Williams next faces reigning French Open champion Francesca Schiavone of Italy, a 6-3, 6-0 winner against 20th seed Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova.
Williams was the last woman to win the US Open two years in a row, in 2000 and 2001, and defending champion Kim Clijsters of Belgium is trying to match that feat. Clijsters easily got past former No. 1 and 2008 French Open champion Ana Ivanovic, 6-2, 6-1, of Serbia on Sunday.
“The pressure is a privilege. It’s something that comes because you’ve done well in the past, and I look at it in that way,” said Clijsters, who will play No. 5 Sam Stosur of Australia or No. 12 Elena Dementieva of Russia in the quarterfinals. “I know how hard it is to try and win those seven matches and how much you have to be focused and work, especially on the details.”
She won seven consecutive games in one stretch to seize control, and her deep groundstrokes and usually strong defense put pressure on Ivanovic, who made 28 unforced errors.
“I was on the big stage again,” said Ivanovic, whose ranking dropped to 65th in July but now is back up to 40th. “Lots of emotions came back, and I just felt a little slow and just a little bit out of it.”
(With AP)
In Photo: Rafael NadalL has won all his matches in straight sets and has not had his serve broken. (AP)
