Boston Globe
By Bud Collins
May 9, 2024
ROME -- When the tennis laborers of Spanish-speaking persuasion talk about swift-footed and lightning-handed Argentine Guillermo Coria, they call him "El Mago" -- The Magician. And he lived up to that nickname last night by making three championship points vanish. But the nimble Argentine's problem was that he couldn't stuff teenager Rafael Nadal, who ran and leaped like a jackrabbit, back into the hat.
On the fourth match point, the magic jammed with Coria's backhand volley, which floated over the baseline. Before it landed, 18-year-old Nadal was landing, too -- with a backward somersault and rolling joyfully in the beige dirt of Il Foro Italico.
Nobody in this frantic insane asylum wondered where No. 1 Roger Federer was spending the evening. Although Federer, assailed by sore feet, didn't enter the Italian Open, No. 11 Nadal and No. 7 Coria were more than any tennis nut could ask for.
Surging through a shotmaking extravaganza of 5 hours 14 minutes, a long afternoon's journey into darkness, they traded blows like prizefighters storming into the 15th round of a title bout with the outcome yet in doubt.
Their 15th round was the concluding tiebreaker, an excruciating passage of 14 points as 10,000 witnesses chanted, sang, and stomped away their nerves until Coria couldn't control the last shot. Only then was the championship surely in the possession of the star-bursting Spanish kid on his debut in town, 6-4, 3-6, 6-3, 4-6, 7-6 (8-6).
Rome-storming "El Nino," a fearsome yet jovial lefthander, has amazingly won 17 consecutive matches and three titles over the last 27 days.
Obviously, he wasn't starved for victory, but he behaved as though he needed it badly to survive in an incredible rush from deep in The Magician's hat in the fifth set. Coria, considered the world's clay-court master by his colleagues, drove to a 3-0 lead in the decisive set -- double-break -- and had two points with serve to lead, 4-0.
There, Nadal stonewalled, even though, "at 0-3, my energy is finish. But I can won, thanks to the public," he said. "They support me."
A 4-0 lead probably would have carried Coria through. But Nadal avoided the magician's sawing-him-in-half trick. Nadal, a muscular 6-footer, prodded Coria hard for nine minutes in that critical fourth game, breaking through with a dainty drop shot that started a run to 4-3 for himself.
Confirmed baseliners, they are also the quickest guys in the game, and imaginative in their thrusts and angles so that the longest of all Italian finals became a masterpiece to celebrate the tourney's 75th anniversary.
Their speed set them forth as a pair of extraordinary burglars, stealing points that seemed won and keeping them alive well past expectancy. Point and counterpoint exchanges covered every square inch of the court.
Nadal's massive three-way forehand (crosscourt, down the line, inside-out) was most damaging, and in the matter of deceptive drop shots, he made points on 16 of 24, Coria 10 of 20.
Both rebounded sensationally in a labyrinthine battle. Coria looked beaten when he lost the 21-minute last game of the third, falling on the seventh set point after 11 deuces. But he charged back to break Nadal twice to advance to the fifth.
Neither was quite so fast at the end, but, Coria said, "Every game that passed I was more surprised at his running and shots. I just kept thinking to endure physically and mentally. Rafael never gave up and neither did I, but . . . to be so close, two points away . . ."
That was the situation at 6-6 in the tiebreaker as Nadal, feeling his toes cramping and his gashed left index finger throbbing, blew his third match point with a double fault. "Nerves," he said in English.
However, Nadal's pounding forehands sent Coria scrambling and set up a smash for 7-6. Coria's forehands moved the Spaniard out of position, causing a desperate lob. But Coria's weary overhead from the service line came right back to Nadal, whose two forehand bids for passers did the trick. Coria volleyed the first, but not sharply enough, and the second flew too far.
Their groaning with every swing ended -- the slighter Coria (5 feet 9, inches, 150 pounds) making gentler noises, but strokes almost as heavy -- and the 70-year-old Foro erupted. The cheering shook the aged pines. Once again an Argentine Guillermo was the victim in a record struggle. Robust Guillermo Vilas fell to New Yorker Vitas Gerulaitis in the 1979 final of 4 hours 53 minutes -- 6-7, 7-6, 6-7, 6-4, 6-2 -- but it was flat at the end.
Such longtime Foro habitues as reporters Rino Tommasi and Gianni Clerici, and 1957 and 1961 champ Nicola Pietrangeli rated it the finest of Italian finals.
There was magic to it all right, but The Magician disappeared.
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