The "new normal" is taking some getting used to. The new normal means that I find myself looking through Rafa's draws and thinking "this could be tricky" where I would never have once done so. The new normal meant that I found myself last weekend fearing that Rafa was playing Dominic Thiem because he once slightly gave it a go against him at Roland Garros. The new normal now means holding no expectations, taking nothing as a given and being unable to assume that Rafa will make the "business end" of a tournament and performing well there if he does. The new normal is a tricky place in which we find ourselves and our reactions to it are difficult.
Sometimes you're not thanked for having views like that, or you're told that you should cut Rafa some some slack, or that he's trying his best and that even the so-called lesser ranked players are only below the top 10 by margins. I say let's leave each other alone to come to terms with the new normal at our own individual pace and accept the opinions that go with it.
I didn't feel frustration watching Rafa last night, I felt sadness. You see flashes of that brilliance he once had, but you see him lacking faith in his very best shot and the frustration he has with his own game. You see his inability to now wipe a point from the memory bank and start right on over. You see worried looks to his box, you see someone who's a shadow of his former self and he just can't work out why. I only managed to stay up for the first two sets and gave in to my bed for the third. But do you know what, I still expected to wake up this morning to see that he'd won. You see, I'm still working on adapting to the new normal ...
I truly don't know what's next for Rafa. There was improvement towards the back end of 2015 and the start of this year. No, it wasn't good enough to take a set off Djokovic but he's not on his own there. The technical aficionados of the game have described how's he's been tinkering with his own, trying to play a more aggressive game, shorten points. I'm not qualified to talk about such things but with the realisation that hitting hard and not staying around to craft points is the order of day now, he's taken to playing aggression in an un-controlled manner rather than controlled, which is what he did before. Or not at all when holding match points ...
The gift of hindsight is a wonderful thing. I'm sure the late decision to go to Buenos Aires and the tournament in Rio were taken as opportunities to win a couple of titles and hopefully get him back on track after the disappointment in Australia. My fear now is that they will further compound Rafa's distress following Australia, interrupt any flow he may have had on hard courts and put fear back in his head ahead of the clay court season. If what was once cannon fodder is now beating him on his best surface, how the hell is he even going to be able to come back from that?
It was Miami last year where Rafa made his big admission over his confidence ... that's nearly 12 months ago and frankly, how is it any better? The comments about his team rumble on but I believe that Rafa will do nothing about changing Toni and I also feel that if Toni did the honourable thing and offered to step aside for a while, Rafa wouldn't hear of it. Rafa is still trotting out this "work hard" ethos to the media, but to my mind, resting that big muscle between his ears wouldn't go amiss. Take a step back, find some joy again and if tinkering with his game was something they think they have to do to beat Djokovic then to hell with it and go back to what he knows best in order to beat the other players instead.
I have no idea what this new season will bring, and it may not be a lot. Rather than concentrating on cutting the slack over Rafa, let's cut each other some slack as we adapt to what we hope or would expect Rafa to be.
The new normal sucks ...
