Rafael Nadal’s dream of the calendar Grand Slam is alive

Rafael Nadal’s attempt to become the first player since Australian Rod Laver to win the calendar Grand Slam seemed imminent. When the score was 3:6, 3:4, he called the physiotherapist onto the pitch. He had injured his stomach muscles and served at half strength at best. For minutes he disappeared into the dressing room for treatment. His father Sebastian signaled him from the box: “Stop it, let it be.”

Surrender, the word doesn’t exist in Nadal’s vocabulary

But Nadal just shook his head. Give up. That word doesn’t seem to exist in his vocabulary. He returned to the court after around five minutes and won the second set but fell back by one set again.

And yet: After four hours he was the winner again. 3: 6, 7: 5, 3: 6, 7: 5, 7: 6 he won the quarterfinals against Taylor Fritz. The 24-year-old American, ranked No. 14, had defeated Nadal before this season. In the final of the Indian Wells Masters 1000 tournament, he beat the Spaniard and at the same time ended his streak of 20 consecutive wins since the start of the season.

Fritz is one of only three players to have beaten Nadal this year, along with Carlos Alcaraz (in Madrid) and Denis Shapovalov (in Rome). But this time the American didn’t find a way to victory either. In the match tie-break of the fifth set to ten points, he only won four rallies.

The never-ending story of tennis revenant Nadal found another continuation. How often has Nadal seemed on the ground: In the final of the Australian Open he lost the first two sets against the Russian Daniil Medvedev, in Roland Garros he seemed against the Canadian Felix Auger-Aliassime, his great rival Novak Djokovic and also against the German Alexander Zverev standing knockout But he always found a way to turn the games around.

Nadal keeps performing small medical miracles

Nadal doesn’t like to turn the laws of physics upside down. But again and again he performs minor medical miracles. A good month ago in Paris, he had to be more or less sharpened by his personal doctor to the 14th title in Roland-Garros. Before every single match, he had injected the nerve in his left foot without feeling, thus enabling Nadal to compete at all. The week after his 22nd Major title, he underwent pulsed radiofrequency therapy in Barcelona, ​​which permanently desensitized the nerve.

Now, in the Wimbledon quarter-finals, Nadal braved an abdominal muscle injury that hampered his service and restricted his movements. How he did it, he was asked in the field interview: “I don’t know myself. I had moments where I didn’t believe I could finish this match anymore. Something is wrong with my abs. I hope that I can compete on Friday.”

Hardly anyone seriously doubts that Nadal will find a way to do it. He has two days to recover for the semi-final against Nick Kyrgios. The Australian won his quarter-final against Chilean Cristian Garin without losing a set or energy. Kyrgios has already beaten Nadal at Wimbledon in 2014 and is currently in better form than ever.

Nadal is still on course for the Grand Slam

But Kyrgios knows as well as any other player on the tour: it takes a special effort to beat Rafael Nadal in a Grand Slam tournament. The 36-year-old Mallorquin is only the sixth man in the history of men’s tennis to try to win the first three major tournaments and thus travel to the US Open with the chance to create the calendar Grand Slam. The last person to have this chance was Novak Djokovic last year. The Serb failed in the last match against Daniil Medvedev.

But nothing seems impossible for Nadal in 2022. He was also asked on the pitch how far he still remembers the epic final in 2008 against Roger Federer, in which he won his first Wimbledon title. Nadal replied that he had played one or two memorable matches against Federer on this pitch. “But above all, it was difficult for me to imagine in 2008 that I would still be playing at Wimbledon in 2022. » But for Rafael Nadal nothing seems impossible.