Sports Are Stupid

This is the way Rafael Nadal’s French Open story ends: not with a bang but an “Oh, f— this.”

Dear tennis gods, I hate you. This wasn’t how Rafael Nadal’s storied French Open career was meant to end. The 14-time winner here at Roland Garros — 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2022 — wasn’t supposed to play the No. 4 player in the world who was coming off a huge clay court title in Rome… a player who shouldn’t have even been allowed to be on the court because of multiple abuse allegations against him. The Paris weather wasn’t supposed to be terrible — the closed roof and humidity both benefitted Rafa’s opponent. Rafa’s serve wasn’t supposed to be broken in the first game of the match. Rafa wasn’t supposed to lose. And I wasn’t supposed to end the match with tears streaming down my face.

This wasn’t the storybook ending that I wanted or that Rafa deserved.

Dear tennis gods, I love you. Thank you for Rafa’s 14 French Open titles, eight other major titles (so 22 total), two Olympic gold medals, and 209 weeks as the world No. 1. Thanks for the trophy lifts and trophy bites.  Thank you for compelling me to turn on the 2008 Wimbledon final that changed my life. Thank you for the forehands and the backhands and the volleys and the overheads. Thank you for the bonkers points and the extraordinary slides. Thank you for the life lessons, too — I absorbed Rafa’s fighting approach to everything. Thank you for showing me what a champion looks like. Thank you for Rafa. 

But after Monday’s match? Yeah, I kinda hate you.

I have a refrain: Sports are stupid. And as much as I love them, they are. They get you engaged and excited — and then let you down in the most spectacular fashion. The worst heartbreak I’ve experienced has been at the hands of a sports team. (Only partially because I don’t really do relationships. Yes, I’m working on it.) Sports are responsible for some of my highest highs — every single Buster Posey hug, Bukayo Saka, Troy Polamalu’s strip-sack of Joe Flacco to give the Steelers the division lead, James Harrison’s sideline sprint in the Super Bowl, Sidney Crosby— and my lowest lows: anyone beating Mikaela Shiffrin, every time Manchester City has the ball, LeBron James. And yet I keep coming back.

I’m a big fan of a number of sports teams or athletes, but Rafa was the first one *I* picked on my own. I’m a San Francisco Giants fan and a Golden State Warriors fan because of my mom, who grew up in the Bay Area. I’m a Pittsburgh Steelers fan and a Pittsburgh Pirates fan because of my dad, who grew up in Pittsburgh. (And he’s a sports fan because of his mom — and his dad, to a lesser extent.) I’m an Arsenal fan because my fourth-grade soccer coach named our team the Gunners in honor of his favorite soccer club. I root for professional athletes who went to Cal because I went to Cal. But Rafa? Rafa was all mine. 

I clearly remember the day I decided that. 

I was on the elliptical in my parents’ room in Granite Bay, California, and wanted something to watch. What happened to be on? The 2008 Wimbledon final between Rafa and his great rival, Roger Federer. I’d watched tennis before then and had gone to tennis camps, but I wasn’t really invested in the sport. But after I turned on this final? There was nothing casual about how I felt. 

At first, I didn’t know who I was rooting for. Federer was making tennis look like ballet. Should I root for him? Hmm… What about the guy with the long hair and even longer shorts who looked like a Tasmanian devil out there? Decisions, decisions. But then the announcers kept saying things along the lines of, “Is this finally going to be the time Nadal beats Federer here?” while listing Rafa’s recent defeats at the Swiss’ hands. I made my choice — the underdog — and I never looked back. 

While Federer was all grace, Rafa was grit. Federer looked like he’d never break a sweat, Rafa was a waterfall of perspiration. He fought and fought — and then fought some more. He was magic and hard work. He was fun! After four hours and 48 minutes of tennis, Rafa won, 6-4, 6-4, 6-7, 6-7, 9-7. He collapsed onto the ground. I breathed a sigh of relief.

From then on, I’d never miss one of Rafa’s big matches.

When I was a senior in college, my sorority put together senior spotlights where people submitted stories about a person. One of the most telling about me? A time when, as a freshman in college knowing very few people, I joined my roommate at a frat party as a kind of wingwoman. It got late, and everyone went outside to smoke — everyone, that is, except me. I commandeered the remote of the frat’s TV (a frat where I knew maybe three people) and turned on the 2012 Australian Open final between Rafa and Novak Djokovic.

I plopped myself on their brown leather couch, and frat members came down and looked at me, more than a little confused; a couple joined in and watched for a game or two. Was it weird? Totally? Did I feel awkward? Absolutely. But nothing was keeping me from watching this match.

Rafa ended up losing (7-5, 4-6, 2-6, 7-6, 5-7) in the longest Australian Open match and the longest major final match in history. No, I didn’t stay at the frat the whole time — my roommate and her crush in the fraternity (who have since gotten married) eventually were ready to walk back to our dorms — but I stayed up until the very end to catch every single point. I still have nightmares about some of them.

The match is known for being one of the most physically punishing of all time (the players needed to sit during the award presentation) — and I felt the physical exhaustion, too. My neck muscles were sore from hunching over, my heart had no idea what was going on with the sudden changes in its bpm. I had bags under my eyes the next day, which prompted a professor to ask if I was OK. (I didn’t know how to explain that, no, I wasn’t, because my favorite tennis player had just lost in devastating fashion. I doubted the school health plan covered that.) 

That 2012 final spawned one of my favorite pieces of sports journalism, a Grantland (RIP) piece from Brian Phillips — “Nadal vs. Djokovic: Here We Are Again, My Friend.” He wrote after the match:

Nadal, though? He plays like he’s fighting giants. It’s not just the sneer, or the muscles, or the hair, or that forehand — you know, the one where he swoops the racket all the way around his head like he’s whipping the team pulling his chariot. It’s also that frantic tenacity that used to drive me so nuts. Federer seems devastated when he loses but he also seems to sense losses coming and accept them before they arrive. When Nadal falls behind, he turns the match into life and death. He gets mad. He hesitates less. He hits the ball harder. He doesn’t look sad or scared. He looks defiant, and he plays like he’s possessed.

As a result, he carries matches to a higher plane than they have any business reaching. Djokovic could and should have won the Australian final in four sets, but Nadal refused to surrender, played lethal tennis, and took Djokovic to a place he’d never been. Instead of notching a routine victory, Djokovic had to tap into the same well of inspiration that Nadal was already drawing from. You could say that all these guys have learned what it means to fight on the plains of Troy because Nadal does it in every match. And we see him do it, so we know what it means, too.

That, THAT, is why I love Rafa. It’s the fact that he played every single point like it could have been his last. The fact that when everyone else thought he was going to lose, he didn’t think that. The fact that he made me realize that nothing is impossible.

He won just his second Australian Open title in 2022 after he came back from two sets down against hard-court specialist Danil Medvedev. After the match, Rafa was asked how much his past comebacks and victories fed into his mindset during a match. He said: 

“If the people believe that I am a believer all the time, that I am going to come back, not true. I am not this… I don’t have this amazing self-confidence that even if I am (down) 5-2, OK, I am going to come back. No. But in my mind is: ‘OK, (this) is almost impossible. I don’t want to give up. I am going to keep trying. But I know it’s going to be almost impossible. Let’s try to let him win, not help him to win. Just try to keep going and put things a little bit more difficult to the opponent….

“In that position, from 100 matches, probably you are going to lose 90. But if you give up, you’re going to lose 100. 

“If you are there, you can win 10 percent.”

Exactly.

I’ve taken those words to heart. When the world feels like it’s against you, you can still fight. If the odds are stacked in someone else’s favor, don’t give up. As long as you believe, there’s still a fighting change. 

Over the years, his shorts shortened and his hairline receded. His tics — the lined-up water bottles and the pre-serve underwear pick — stayed the same. His serve got faster and more efficient, and his body slowed down. 

And I never left his side. 

I kept getting up at odd hours and wreaking havoc on my sleep schedule. I kept watching the major draws and praying to the tennis gods (ugh) for a favorable one. I kept track of the rehab and the live rankings. I kept performing my strange rooting superstitions — muting matches or turning them off to try to change his luck, uttering a “vamos” before every point, swinging my tennis racquet alongside him during a particularly important point. I kept cheering him on.

At the end of Monday’s match, what we assume is his final French Open match, it felt like a part of my childhood was disappearing. I was 14 when I watched that Wimbledon final. I’m now 30. I’ve seen the happy tears and the ¡vamoses! and the shots you wouldn’t believe. I’ve sweated alongside him — although my sweat was because of nerves, not activity. I’ve lost my voice for him. I’ve dreamed big because of him. I’ve gotten a pit in my stomach every time I saw something from him that started with “Hola a todos,” because it was never good news. I’ve been crushed and gutted and have crossed my fingers for next time to be better. 

With Rafa, it usually was. 

Tennis will look a whole lot different without him taking the court. This time next year is going to suck. But it’s fitting that there’s another Spaniard who can take up the mantle of World No. 1 and major champion and become the Prince of Clay, and it’s fitting that the best player in the women’s game idolizes Rafa and has three French Open titles of her own. I’d love for those two — Carlos Alcaraz and Iga Swiatek — to win the titles this year. Because it’s in a lot of younger players that I realize Rafa’s legacy transcends. He might physically not take to the clay again, but there will always be a piece of him somewhere that does. Rafael Nadal IS Roland Garros. I’m hoping Rafa and Carlitos team up for Olympic doubles — which will happen this year on the French clay — and really just have fun. Carlitos is my mom’s favorite tennis player, so we’d finally be able to agree on which Spaniard to root for: both.

I’m not a very good tennis player, so I’ll never get to do a fist pump and a ¡vamos! of my own after a particularly great point. But I can carry his mindset into other aspects of my life — fight like you’re on the plains of Troy, even in a situation where you know you’ll only win 10 percent of the time; then do it again the next time, and the time after that.

So, tennis gods, I hate you for the way Rafa’s career at the French Open ended. But, fine, you did give him — and the rest of us — an epic 23-year career. I guess you’re not so bad after all.