MADRID — With nothing left to prove at this stage, Rafael Nadal went out and proved something more.
That at the end of another grueling season he could shrug off nagging injuries, middle-of-the-night finishes and inspired younger opposition and still lead Spain to a Davis Cup title by winning all eight of his matches.
Nadal, back at No. 1 at age 33, was undoubtedly the player of the week in this new, quick-hitting 18-team final format that is hardly to everyone’s taste in tennis.
But though he clinched the victory at home in Sunday’s championship match against Canada with a 6-3, 7-6 (7) victory over Denis Shapovalov, his was not the most moving performance of the day.
That came earlier when Nadal’s Spanish teammate Roberto Bautista Agut returned to the court three days after the death of his father, Joaquín, and defeated Félix Auger-Aliassime in the opening singles match, 7-6 (3), 6-3.
“We went through everything this week,” Nadal said. “Yes, I won eight of eight matches, but I say this with my hand on my heart: The person who was vital in this Davis Cup was Roberto. What he did, for me, is nearly inhuman. You can’t explain it. He’ll be an example for the rest of my life.”
Bautista, 31, is a top 10 player, too: a formidable, smooth-moving counterpuncher who reached the Wimbledon semifinals this year. But he left the team midcompetition on Thursday to be with his family.
On Sunday, he showed his resilience, navigating passages of fine play from Auger-Aliassime, who is 19 but proving more consistent and resourceful over all.
Bautista held it together remarkably well, losing his composure only after the victory was complete as he prepared for the postmatch television interview on court.
But he soon collected himself, took the microphone in hand and addressed the capacity crowd of over 12,000.
“After such a complicated and difficult week, I believe that to get through it you have to face it and take a step forward,” he said.
Other tennis players have taken a similar approach through the years. In 1998, the former women’s star Monica Seles’s father and longtime coach, Karolj, died less than two weeks before the start of the French Open. Seles, grieving, decided to play and reached the singles final.
In 2017, Steve Johnson, an American, won an emotional first-round match at the French Open, less than three weeks after the death of his father, Steve Sr., at 58.
Bautista returned to Spain’s team bench on Saturday night, when Nadal and Feliciano López clinched a 2-1 victory over Britain in the semifinals by prevailing in a taut doubles match over Jamie Murray and Neal Skupski.
By Sunday morning, Bautista was intent on playing, and with Spain’s third-highest-ranked singles player, Pablo Carreño Busta, dealing with a leg injury, the Spanish captain, Sergi Bruguera, was eager to call on Bautista if he felt emotionally ready.
“Yesterday he was at his father’s funeral, and today he is out there giving everything,” Bruguera said. “So many emotions.”
It was the first appearance in a Davis Cup final for Canada. It was the sixth Davis Cup title for Spain and the most unusual on many levels.
It was the first in this new, much-debated format in which ties have been reduced from five best-of-five-set matches spread over three days to three best-of-three-set matches played over a single day.
Spain’s four previous victories at home in Davis Cup finals — 2000, 2004, 2009 and 2011 — had all come on clay, long the Spanish players’ preferred surface.
But though Spain was playing at home in these revamped finals, it no longer had the choice of ground. In an attempt to use a more equitable surface, the organizers chose to stage the event on an indoor hardcourt, at the Caja Mágica tennis complex.
Such courts have rarely been Nadal’s happiest hunting ground. He has never won the ATP Finals, the prestigious season-ending championships generally played indoors, and he did not qualify for its knockout phase this month in London.
But the extra days of rest he was able to take after that elimination were perhaps critical to his bravura performance in Madrid, where he won five singles matches and three doubles matches with his trademark positive energy and without losing his serve.
He did not face a top 10 player in singles: His highest-ranked opponents were Diego Schwartzman of Argentina (No. 14) and Shapovalov (No. 15).
But Nadal faced down plenty of challenges, including 4:30 a.m. bedtimes after late-finishing matches. It has been quite an end to 2019 with his fourth United States Open title in September, his wedding in October and now this.
“It’s always difficult to speak about Rafa,” López said. “To be honest, there are things that you cannot describe with words, because the things that he was able to produce yesterday in the doubles and today against Denis and during his whole career, they’re things that only people like Rafa are able to do.”
Nadal is now 29-1 in singles in the Davis Cup and has not lost a singles match in the competition in more than 15 years. His only defeat came in his debut against Jiri Novak of the Czech Republic in the first round in 2004. But Nadal went on to help lead the Spanish to victory later that year against the United States, defeating Andy Roddick on clay in Seville, Spain, in the 2004 final.
It was one of the early signs of the great career ahead of him, and his long-running success and popularity in Spain are a big reason the Spanish investment firm Kosmos and its president, Gerard Piqué, best known as a soccer star, were interested in acquiring the rights to the Davis Cup and bringing the first edition to Madrid.
There were issues with scheduling and technology and with a lack of spectators for matches not involving Nadal and Spain. In the end, only five of the year-end top 10 took part, with Nadal’s longtime rival Roger Federer having organized a Latin American exhibition tour with the young German star Alexander Zverev during the same week.
Piqué said on Sunday that changes would be made, but the event is still set to return to Madrid with 18 teams in 2020.
Spain, as defending champion, is guaranteed to be one of them, and it is hard to imagine that Nadal will have stopped running, hustling and winning by then.
Source: Tennis - nytimes.com
