Nadal stays positive despite setbacks
MASON, OHIO— It used to be that Rafael Nadal crashing out of a tournament in an early round caused the biggest headlines in tennis. But in a year in which he has consistently fallen short of the high standard he has set for himself, each subsequent loss seems less and less newsworthy.
The latest came Thursday evening at the Western & Southern Open outside Cincinnati, with eighthranked Nadal falling, 5-7, 6-4, 7-6 (3), to a fellow Spaniard, 23rd-ranked Feliciano López.
The third-round loss nullified the prospect of a 34th meeting between Nadal and third-ranked Roger Federer, which would have occurred here in the quarter-finals. Federer easily beat Kevin Anderson, 6-1, 6-1, in the night’s final match.
Nadal was generally positive in defeat.
“Others I lost because of my fault, because I played bad, because I didn’t play with the right intensity,” he said. “(That) was not the case today. So I accept the loss and keep going. It’s nothing more that I can say and nothing more that I can do than keep going and keep believing that, with the work, things are going better.”
Though he has won three titles at smaller tournaments this year, his ranking has sunk to depths it has not reached since before he won his first Grand Slam title at the 2005 French Open.
At the three Grand Slam events and seven Masters events he has entered this year, he has reached a final only once, in Madrid, and was clobbered there by Andy Murray. Against players in the top 30 this year, Nadal is 13-10. Perhaps more worrisome, he has lost twice to players ranked outside the top 100, including a secondround loss at Wimbledon to 102ndranked Dustin Brown.
During what has been traditionally his strongest patch of the year, the European clay-court season leading up to and including the French Open, for the first time since 2004 he did not win a single title. His loss at the French Open, a quarter-final drubbing at the hands of top-seeded Novak Djokovic, was only his second loss in the 11 years he has played there.
Nadal’s career has often been rankled by injury, especially to his knees, but through the pain he has established himself as one of the most reliable winners on tour. He has won at least one Grand Slam title in each of the past 10 years, a streak that will end next month if he does not win the U.S. Open in New York. Nadal won the U.S. Open in 2010 and last competed in it in 2013.
He said his focus was less on trying to win the U.S. Open than on eliminating the kinds of poor matches that have frequently sunk his chances this year.
“I’m going to try to be there and have the right energy to play a good tournament,” he said.
Nadal, citing his seventh-place standing in the year-to-date rank- ings that determine the eight-player field for the ATP World Tour Finals in London, put things in perspective.
“I am No. 7 in the race, so it’s not that (much of a) disaster,” Nadal said. “I am enough humble to not consider myself that good, consider to be No. 7 in the race a bad number.”
Nadal, who has expressed a humility and lack of entitlement that have at times seemed at odds with his invincibility, especially on clay, said he never considered himself immune to slumping.
“I always understood that this could happen,” he said, adding: “I never considered myself a big, big star. I appreciate so much when all the good things are happening to me. I enjoy all (those) things. I am having a tough year, yes. Not terrible year; bad year.”