Rafael Nadal to Serve

...up some life lessons!

Soooo, I’ve reached the point in Resume Gap where the chapters are getting looser and I’m faced with the problem of needing to do some heavy lifting to fix them before I can post more of it here, which is kind of what I didn’t want to do when I set out to share what was, up until a few months ago, an abandoned project.

Then, two days ago, I also read this book review by Merve Emre that both annoyed me and made me further doubt the project. It’s too much to get into here and I haven’t actually read the book Emre eviscerates, errr, reviews, which makes it tricky for me to properly comment on, which means that I can improperly comment on it?? Perfect.

So Emre basically asks the question: What even is this thing the peoples are calling Mom Rage? And I guess my answer for her would be something like: Well, it is a hard concept to understand if you don’t have a, what’s-it-called, PULSE! P.S. ENJOY WRITING FOR THE NEW YORKER AND GETTING PAID WELL WHILE I TOIL AWAY AT MY DUMB SUBSTACK.

To make matters worse, gymnastics class got cancelled for at least a week, maybe much longer. [Also, too much to get into here!] All of which leaves me feeling bereft, angry, and frustrated. (Hi. Do you want to subscribe to my substack??)

But then, this morning I remembered Rafael Nadal and how he’s helped me in the past when I’ve gotten like this, i.e. bereft, angry, and frustrated. In fact, I’d already written an essay about this very thing. About Rafa encouraging me not to give up on myself when I really, really actually want to do so.

(When I first started this Substack, this was one of the essays I’d assumed I would post here—I’d originally submitted it to the NYT’s Letter of Recommendation column, and while I wish I could say they rejected it, really, I never heard back from them at all!)

Which is all a very long way of saying: Here’s some content I needed to write at one point and now need to share! Enjoyyyy:

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“Rafael Nadal to serve,” begins the five-hour-and-forty-one minute replay of the 2022 Australian Open Final, which I recently watched on YouTube, some ten months after the actual event itself (which I also watched). The camera zooms in slowly as Nadal goes through his pre-serve procedural, which is kicked off with a wedgie-pick. His wedgie-pick™.

What’s this? You don’t have time to watch an almost six-hour match? Maybe don’t think of it as a match. Consider it like you would a Ken Burns docuseries— something you watch because you know it’s good for you. This was at least my dad’s reasoning for making me sit through Burns’ “The Civil War” (1990), all nine episodes, one for each year of life I’d lived so far.

Growing up, my dad was always making me watch things I didn’t care about, for my own good. But if making me watch Stephen King’s It (also, 1990) was for my personal betterment, I’m not sure it “worked,” unless spending the next five years of one’s life afraid of the sewers, and therefore, afraid to pee, is good?

That said, if I could harness some Boomer-parenting mentality, I would absolutely make my kids watch this match from start to finish.

To set the scene: Nadal, at age thirty-five, is not favored to win. Not only is he old for a professional athlete but The Australian Open takes place in January—the first of four Grand Slams of the season—and Rafa missed the entire second half of 2021 because of a perennially bad foot, enough time off for pundits to speculate about his retirement. Plus, his opponent, Daniil Medvedev, is a decade younger than him and coming off his best season to date. Also important: Nadal is wearing deep gem tones, a kind of magenta shirt and teal wristbands (colors my boys have deemed “for girls” and refuse to wear).

o.o.t.d.

When I wrote that I’d watched this match already, it’s a half truth. Because of the time difference, by the time I woke up in Los Angeles, the match (in Melbourne) had just finished. But I avoided the news and put on the replay first thing.

I was desperately rooting for Rafa, but you couldn’t tell by the way I systematically removed myself from the room that houses our TV. I do this a lot with the things I care about most—distance myself, afraid of feeling too much—and when I saw that Rafa had lost the first two sets, I decided to go for a quick walk.

It's a tad ironic because Nadal has explained in interviews that the main reason behind all of his on-court ticks and mannerisms, à la that wedgie-pick, is that they help him stay focused. They are “a way of placing myself in a match,” he has said. He’s also talked about his willingness to suffer. Suffering is part of the game.

I don’t know exactly what compelled me to rewatch the match via YouTube one night, except that it was late—everyone else in the house was asleep—and I wanted to watch something that might comfort me. What I found was so much more than that. Watching without constantly distracting myself and with already knowing the result was a kind of revelation. I began to feel things apart from anxiety. I could also see that Nadal was not playing badly in that first set where he loses 6-2. Medvedev was just playing better.

A sporting event is not a movie, and yet, the more I watched, the more I felt that familiar moviegoing feeling of being transported to another world, a world propelled by Nadal’s steady, quiet self-belief. Yes, he gets frustrated, but even his frustration feels undergirded by a deep calm.

Dad’s not angry; he’s just disappointed.

In the third set, each player holds serve until it’s 2-3, Medvedev. (For the uninitiated, winning the game where you serve is called “holding” and in men’s tennis especially, “holding serve” is fairly key to winning matches.) So, Nadal is serving. He loses the first two points. The crowd has been behind Rafa the entire time, so that when Medvedev rips a backhand down the line to make it love-forty and triple-break point, the crowd is not exactly cheering. There is a lot of whistling and shaking of the heads.

But then: Rafa slices a drop shot that Medvedev cannot run down. Nadal gives a tiny fist pump, grits his teeth. The next point, Rafa is just getting the ball back in play when Medvedev hits his backhand long. 30-40. In the next point, Medvedev tries his own drop shot, but Rafa sees it, runs it down, and slices it crosscourt. Medvedev is in the wrong place. He hits the ball into the middle of the net. Rafa explodes into what looks like a triple “Come on!”—you can’t quite hear what he’s saying because the crowd has gone insane.

When he manages to hold serve a few points later, all Nadal has done is taken the set to 3-3. He’s still losing—handily—but something has happened. Nadal wins the third set 6-4.

In the fourth set, after seven different chances in a single game, Nadal finally breaks Medvedev. The players go to their respective benches. Medvedev calls over to the chair ump, demanding that he “step up.” Medvedev is upset at the crowd, and specifically those who are yelling in between his serves. It’s a telling moment—Medvedev has lost himself—and another good lesson for my kids. Which one of these men looks like he’s winning? 

By the time I see Nadal win the match, days have passed. I feel like I’ve journeyed somewhere. I’m particularly struck by this feeling of the beautiful and arbitrary nature of sport. The tennis season is year-round, a tournament almost every week. Only four of them are played to five sets. If it hadn’t been a Grand Slam, Medvedev would’ve won in two sets and that would’ve been that. I’m left with this clear feeling that if you can just hang in there, if you can stay focused, you may end up the winner. Not all the time, but in the long run. I’m left with a feeling that maybe I don’t need to make my kids watch this match for them to witness a level of self-belief that can sustain them in the hardest moments of their lives.

Maybe I can be the steady one. Maybe I can show up for myself, point after point, day after day¹.

1. Big maybe tho.