And with that ... the season is over.
It's been a while. I fell out of love with tennis at Wimbledon. I reeled as some loathsome creature called Kyrios continued with sneering and umpire baiting as he changed his socks and dared the umpire to warn him for time, citing the time Rafa takes. And when Azarenka was asked for the millionth time in her pressers about the noise she makes, she didn't tell them to shut up as she'd answered these boring questions before and why didn't they just move on? No, she said that they should hear the noise that Rafa made when he was practising. I remember thinking that the guy isn't even here any more and yet you are all still at him ...
Rafa then went on to Hamburg and picked up a tournament win. I thought it one of the worst tennis matches I'd ever seen and would have switched off if it hadn't have been Rafa. Something like 80+ UEs between them and it so could have gone the other way, only that time Fognini's antics meant he shot himself in the foot, not the other way around. Rafa's summer's results barely saw him reach quarter finals and he seemingly had a pattern of good match/dreadful one. During the US Open, I awoke in the early hours when Rafa was again playing Fognini. I put the match on to hear him lose the third set and promptly turned it off again and allowed myself to go back to sleep. I knew he'd lose the match and wasn't even surprised to wake up again to the headlines that he had. I think he said he took positives from the result, and I read that he fought like mad in the 5th set. But amongst the comments and platitudes I couldn't find any - because Rafael Nadal doesn't lose in 5 sets when he led by 2 sets and with a break in the third. Fight or no fight ...
So when the Tour started up again back in the Far East to then move on to the indoor courts of Europe, I thought I might as well pack in now. It's my least preferred part of the season and traditionally it's a time when Rafa never really does very well. But hasn't he surprised us all?
Something started to click back into place a little, and Rafa succeeded in doing something that he hadn't been achieving much this season, and that was getting into finals. I know the Prince of Darkness beat him in what seemed like an easy scoreline, but I actually thought Rafa played better than the result demonstrated. I was a tad disappointed that he was broken to lose in Shanghai, but actually what was better, was that he was starting to rack up decent wins against the better players again. You know, giving a message out that he was starting to get back on track and reaching the business end of tournaments. Basel was another good show after it started oh so badly and he could have actually lost to that tw*t Rosol. But he didn't. Now that was what I call fight and not the sort demonstrated in Flushing Meadows. He reached another final, and put up a pretty good show, and I was damned proud of him for taking that second set off Smugly.
Paris again was progress. Super resilience against Anderson and maybe he could have done it against Stan, but it was not to be. F-SF-F-QF ... hell fire, I'd have been dancing with those sort of stats during Rafa's glory years, never mind now!
And so to the season closure at the World Tour Finals. I had no expectations ... and so Rafa beat 3 top 8 players to get to today's semi-finals. Typical. Rafa had no answers today and the PoD played him a bit like he was on a string. Rafa was better in Beijing in my opinion, but unfortunately Djerk has been metronomically carving his way through everyone this season, so Rafa by no way is the exception. I thought Djerk really wanted to crush Rafa today, to try and break him. Because I have this theory that Djerk has suffered so many times at the hands of Rafa, that he now wants to make him suffer, and to inflict victories over him that devastate him, as he has been devastated. Like when Rafa beat him in the semi-final of Olympic Games, that epic in Madrid in 2009, the French Open victories. He wants to make Rafa feel as he felt ... the thing is, Rafa won't ... ever. I think Rafa has been devastated in matches before, but not at the hands of Djokovic. Rafa takes his defeats, accepts when someone is the better player, tries to learn from it, and then simply moves on. He doesn't have your agenda Djokovic, he has own - and is the better man for it.
"He's back!!" is a phrase I've read many times this season. Well Rafa's not, in my opinion. He is - however - at a level that is so much improved from what we saw before September and I sincerely hope it's something he can use to build up confidence from to take forward into next season. Will he ever really be "back"? And what is "back"? Playing like he did in 2013 and winning everything in sight? Or when he wasn't quite winning everything in sight but was still managing to sweep up on the clay, is that "back"? As Rafa marches towards his 30th birthday and with what he's had to take both physically and mentally within his career, "back" will be whatever he's able to make it be. And I wish him every bit of luck that he so deserves to have with it.
As for me, this little blog was such a mainstay to me as I followed Rafa's career and recorded my thoughts on it. And the hiatus has been good. I intend to sit back and watch and enjoy whatever the rest of Rafa's career brings for him. Good luck to us all ...
