The Australian
By Barry Flatman
April 26, 2024
SOMETHING or somebody very special is required to snatch the sporting focus away from the Nou Camp when Barcelona is at the top of Spain's Primera Liga.
Rafael Nadal is currently managing the feat.
The red clay of the city's Real Club is only a few kilometres from the vast stadium where his uncle Miguel Angel Nadal enjoyed a long football career.
He has retired, but his nephew is taking Spanish hero worship to new levels.
Nadalmania, declared the sporting newspaper El Mundo Deportivo across its front page last week, and even El Pais relegated football to secondary importance by announcing the 18-year-old as a boy star with the mentality of a grown man.
He looks like a cheeky teenager who has managed to gatecrash a party and is slightly bemused by the experience - until he steps on to court.
Freed by the security guards who have formed a protective ring around his every off-court movement, he comes of age with a brand of tennis that convinces most who watch he is destined to win some of the greatest prizes.
Early yesterday (AEST), he beat Juan Carlos Ferrero 6-1 7-6 (7-4) 6-3 in the final to claim the Barcelona Open, his fourth title this year. Only Roger Federer, with five, has done better.
A week earlier, Nadal took his first Masters Series title in Monte Carlo, underlining the belief that, on clay, he is the man to beat.
Nadal is trying to master English, but is held back by an adolescent lack of confidence.
"I am playing at a very high level, certainly the highest I have ever played," he said.
"Monte Carlo was my best moment in tennis, my first big title, although I was probably happier when I played in the Spanish team that beat USA to win the Davis Cup last December.
"The experience of playing Federer in a final helped me so much. It made me realise tennis is a matter of concentrating all the time.
"Right now I am tired and that is normal and I'm not sure whether I have the physique to play many five-set matches in a row but I try. We will see."
We certainly will. First, there are Masters Series events in Rome and Hamburg, and then comes Nadal's biggest test to date, when he competes in his first French Open.
"I'm not the favourite because it's my first (Open)," he said. He missed last year's event because of a stress fracture of the left ankle and was sidelined in 2003 after injuring an elbow during some youthful high-jinks.
With his brand of wicked top-spun shots from the baseline and superb footwork, allied to the sort of strength not seen from such a young player since the emergence of Boris Becker, he seems perfectly equipped to deal with any perils the brick dust of Paris can throw at him.
Spaniards sense a great triumph. They have revered tennis heroes before, but not on this premature scale.
Sergi Bruguera would have been barely recognised in Barcelona before winning back-to-back French Opens in the mid-1990s.
But it was observed that while Bruguera may have had the eyebrows of Paul McCartney, he had the personality of a death-watch beetle.
Carlos Moya and Ferrero both held the world No.1 ranking, albeit briefly, and both also won the French Open. But though they were revered as the clay-court champions of the world, the excitement was negligible in comparison to that generated by Nadal.
"Quite frankly, I have never seen anything quite like this so early in a player's career," said the ATP's director of communications and Latin relations, Benito Perez-Barbadillo.
"Everybody is excited by Rafa, everyone wants to speak to him."
Yet not everybody is caught up in the excitement.
Just three months ago, Marat Safin was winning the Australian Open and luxuriating in the experience. His laid-back approach off the court seemed to counterbalance perfectly his power on it, but since then he has struggled to win a match.
The assumption would be that Safin has enough to do getting his game back on track, but the euphoria surrounding Nadal offends him.
"You come here and all you hear is 'Nadal, Nadal, Nadal'," Safin said. "It is wrong for somebody so young. The country has great players. Moya, Ferrero, Albert Costa have all won the French Open but nobody talks about them. Only Nadal. Why is this?"
It seems the finer points of his game are not the only thing Safin has lost sight of in recent months.
**Thanks for the translation. Please do not reproduce without giving credit to the original source and VamosRafael.com.**
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