by Karen Crouse
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
March 27, 2024

KEY BISCAYNE -- This is the column Marat Safin basically dared us to write.

"You like very much your players, the American ones," sniffed Safin, a Russian who trained in Spain for eight years. "Nobody really cares about the Spanish players, especially here."

Our eyes couldn't have gotten any bigger if Safin's words had been a weak lob. Talk about your easy putaways.

We never could pass up the chance to prove somebody wrong. So when Friday afternoon came, of course there we were, settling into a seat at the Grandstand court at Crandon Park to watch Goran Ivanisevic take on Rafael Nadal in a second-round match at the Nasdaq-100 Open.

It was a matchup made for a marquee: The Codger vs. the Kid.

Ivanisevic is a 32-year-old Croat. He has surgical tape where tendons used to be in his left shoulder, left elbow and right knee joints. He won the first of his 22 ATP titles in 1990.

Nadal is a 17-year-old Spaniard. He has matinee-idol charisma where a squirrelly self-consciousness by all rights ought to be. He turned pro in 2001, the same year Ivanisevic won the Wimbledon singles crown.

They made an odder couple than Demi and Ashton. All their match did was crystallize the contrasts.

Ivanisevic walked to the baseline after each point like a man retrieving the morning newspaper in his slippers.

Nadal bounded around like a puppy.

Ivanisevic converted 47 percent of his first serves.

Nadal nailed 77 percent of his.

Ivanisevic faced a break point in each of his service games.

Nadal didn't drop more than two points in any of his.

Ivanisevic never looked comfortable. After the fifth and seventh games of the first set, it would become clear why. He called for ATP trainer Per Bastholt to administer to his sore left shoulder.

Nadal never looked uncomfortable. While Ivanisevic was being treated, Nadal stood twirling his racquet as if it were a baton.

Ivanisevic double-faulted to give Nadal the first set by the score of 6-4. He would play no more. He pointed to his shoulder, gingerly shook Nadal's hand and wished him well, and then, flanked by security officers, disappeared into the darkening afternoon.

It's anybody's guess when and where Ivanisevic will surface next. It'd be easier figuring out where a dandelion's fluff will land.

Not so with Nadal. His path is as easy to track as a comet's. His future is bright, so long as your vision extends beyond this weekend.

Nadal's third-round opponent figures to be Roger Federer, the No. 1 seed, whose match Friday night against Nikolay Davydenko was washed away by rain. "If I end up playing Roger, I think it's a very, very difficult match," Nadal said through an interpreter.

"If it happens that I play my very best tennis and he doesn't play well, I think I can beat him. If everything goes normal, then I'm going to lose."

Nadal laughed. He has a winning personality to go with his attacking baseline game. When it was mentioned to him that he appears to have gone from skinny to sculpted in the past year, Nadal smiled broadly and said, "I think the sleeveless shirt plays a big part in that."

As Nadal answered question after question, his brown eyes lapped up a blond Russian player, Svetlana Kuznetsova, who had stopped to chat with people at a nearby table.

When asked who it was he was checking out, Nadal blushed. What do you know. He is a teenager, after all.

Pushing away the bangs that hang over his eyes like drapes, Nadal said, "Today I was a little nervous playing Goran. I told myself to calm down. When I saw the trainer coming on the court, that's when I was thinking I really wanted to break him. If I did, I thought he'd get discouraged."

Whatever he does against Federer or Davydenko, Nadal has to feel encouraged. He soared from 235 to 47 in the world rankings last year and is the No. 32 seed here. His rise has not gone unnoticed.

Andy Roddick said the perception in the locker room is that the kid is for real.

"We don't really think of him too much as a 17-year-old but just as a Spanish guy with a (heck) of a forehand," Roddick said. "I think I saw him play for the first time in Hamburg last year. He beat (Carlos) Moya on dirt, (Albert) Costa on dirt. It was like, 'All right, welcome.' "

Nadal looks like he's settling in for a long stay. He has the game to make everybody really care about him. Especially here.