By Gerald Marzorati
If shot variety, tactical adjustments, and relentless competitiveness are what keep you glued to a tennis match, then Sunday’s contest between Rafael Nadal and Daniil Medvedev was the greatest U.S. Open men’s final of this young century—and arguably as good as any since John McEnroe defeated Björn Borg in 1980. Like that McEnroe-Borg final, it went five sets. It ended just a few minutes shy of the record four hours and fifty-four minutes that it took Andy Murray to beat Novak Djokovic, also in five sets, in 2012. And, as in Juan Martín del Potro’s stunning upset of Roger Federer, in five sets, in 2009, it pitted a young newcomer against a veteran star who’d won the Open title numerous times before. Though, as Sunday afternoon yielded to night, Medvedev, twenty-three years old and making his first appearance in a major final, did not, in the end, have quite enough to overtake Nadal, who managed to fight off one last break point, earn his third championship point with a drop shot, and hold his serve to win, 7–5, 6–3, 5–7, 4–6, 6–4.
Medvedev did have near everything else: clean ground strokes, varying point patterns, improvisational daring, unwavering self-belief. He’d arrived at the Open on a hard-court summer tear, and he—not Alexander Zverev or Stefanos Tsitsipas—had become the first of the youngest set of players on the men’s tour to break through to a grand-slam final. Against Nadal, he started slowly—not so much a sign of nerves, it seemed, but, rather, evidence of a probing approach to match play. He was testing things, in the hope of arriving at a weakness or two to be exploited. It was Nadal who was edgy as the match began, double-faulting and, tense-armed, leaving his forehand consistently short. In the third game, he swung hard at a short ball and nearly missed it, and his serve was broken. But he broke Medvedev back in the next game, and, from there, he looked to be in charge. Nadal was serving poorly, landing fewer than half of his first serves, but he continued to hold efficiently enough. Medvedev was positioning himself deep behind the baseline to receive Nadal’s serves—too deep, really, to take control of points. Was he even trying to take control? He was experimenting, mostly, with pace and angle, or so it appeared. Nadal, meanwhile, kept up the pressure, and, with Medvedev serving at 5–6, ripped an inside-out forehand winner to earn two break points. On the second of them, Medvedev muffed one of the game’s tougher shots, a backhand overhead volley. Nadal had set one.
He won the second set more easily, and in his usual style. He earned a chance to break in the sixth game by outlasting Medvedev on a twenty-six-shot rally, and then secured it with a deep return that Medvedev could barely get a racquet on. Nadal was stepping inside the baseline to launch his ground strokes, taking away time from Medvedev and running him from side to side with those sharp-angled, gyroscopic, top-spin forehands of his. And he was ending points at the net with stinging volleys, as he’s been doing more and more, especially in matches on hard courts. Medvedev, for his part, was hitting too many rally balls up the middle, and too many predictable crosscourt backhands, which Nadal was anticipating and crushing. When Nadal took the second set, it looked like closing time was near at Arthur Ashe Stadium.
Medvedev has thin facial features, a wispy beard, and unkempt hair, and he generally appears as though he has wandered on court from an English-department-faculty meeting. He often resembles the thinking-face emoji. And, in a match, he is thinking—thinking his way through points and games like no other young player on the men’s side. From the start of the third set, it was clear that his probing was done, and that he had formulated a plan. Nadal, once he’s taken control of a rally, likes to position himself to the backhand side of the baseline, so that he can take almost any ball on his forehand. Medvedev began driving his backhand into the open court, to Nadal’s forehand side—and, given Nadal’s positioning, out of reach, or nearly so. Medvedev has a very good backhand.
He also began rushing the net more and more. He has quick hands and a fine feel for the ball. He’s tall—six feet six—with a wingspan that makes it difficult to send balls past him at the net. He is also the quickest big man to make it to this level of the men’s game, though he never looks as though he’s moving terribly fast. Nadal appeared puzzled after more than one point. He got to that? Medvedev began winning more of the marathon rallies and cat-and-mouse scrambles for drop shots around the net. He had eighteen winners in the third set. The level of tennis from both players had reached a rare degree of excellence and intensity. The crowd—screaming at first for Nadal, then for Medvedev, and then for the sheer release from tension that screaming might bring—had grown just this side of berserk. Play continued through the noise. When Medvedev broke Nadal to take the set, he did what he tends to do in dramatic moments: he tugged his shirt collar.
The fourth set was steadier, as both Nadal and Medvedev began showing signs of fatigue. They were both working to shorten points, coming to net often and redlining their ground strokes. It was as if they sensed that the match would go to a fifth set, and, when Nadal was broken, serving at 4–5, it did. Medvedev had his break-point opportunities in the fifth—two in the second game—but Nadal saved them, the second with a violent, inside-out forehand winner, which came shortly after the chair umpire had slapped him with a fault for taking too much time to serve. But it was his slow and low backhand slice that ultimately undid Medvedev, forcing the younger player to bend and to generate pace on his own. In the fifth game, with Medvedev serving and up 40–love, Nadal managed to slice his way to deuce and eventually break serve, with a forehand winner after a wild zig-zag twenty-eight-shot rally. The match wasn’t over, exactly. There were more breaks of serve. But, at this point, Nadal and Medvedev were two fighters out on their feet, refusing to drop their gloves. After the final ball sailed long, Nadal lay on his back for some time, relieved and victorious. Then he rose, and, after basking in the crowd’s applause and greeting Medvedev at the net, he put away his racquets, went to his chair, and wept.
The match will be remembered in part as a moment of arrival for Medvedev, who, earlier in the tournament, had generated some misunderstanding as to who he really is. During his third-round match, he ripped a towel from a ball person, slyly gave the finger to a crowd that started booing him, and, later, after he’d won, trolled them with mock congratulations. But he is not, in fact, especially hotheaded or mean-spirited, and, on Sunday, he won over a stadium filled with those who’d come to cheer for Rafa. His post-match remarks on the court were warm and open-hearted, and spoke to what just about every high-school tennis coach tries to instill in his players.
The match should figure, too, in the ongoing evaluation and reëvaluation of Nadal. This marked his nineteenth grand-slam title, just one shy of Roger Federer’s record twenty. Nadal is five years younger than Federer, and, late in every spring, there is always Paris—the French Open—where he simply wins and wins. He is the king of clay; he also deserves to be considered one of the greatest hard-court players of all time. Sunday’s win marks his fourth U.S. Open championship, tying him with John McEnroe. Only Pete Sampras and Federer, with five, have won more since the tournament moved to Flushing, and onto hard courts, in 1978. Nadal has also won the Australian Open, beating Federer to do so; the championship at Indian Wells, three times; and the Roger’s Cup, in Canada, five times—all on hard surfaces. At the U.S. Open, he has beaten Novak Djokovic, the greatest hard-court player of this era, twice. Nadal has often complained that hard courts have hobbled his knees, that too many tournaments are played on the surface. But what he’s mostly done on hard courts is conquer what daunts him, by fighting the kinds of relentless battles that he relishes, as he did against a rising hard-court comer on Sunday.
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