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Rafael Nadal a competitor unlike any other

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It’s what we, as sports fans, live for. The unpredictable. The unscripted. The epic. The indelible. We’ll sit through a hundred run-of-the-mill, dime-a-dozen games/matches/meets; forgettable, underwhelming outcomes indistinguishable from one boxscore to the next, because we know, eventually, it will come. The no-hitter. The buzzer-beater. The Hail Mary. The five-set thriller.

The Ashe Stadium collective was treated to just such a gift on Tuesday night (and into the wee hours of Wednesday morning) at the US Open, when defending champ Rafael Nadal and one-time #NextGen poster boy Dominic Thiem faced each other in a primetime quarterfinal for the ages; a transcendent match that surely makes the short-list for the greatest ever played in the borough of Queens, New York.     

ESPN analyst Darren Cahill lists it among the top five matches he’s ever witnessed courtside. And that’s saying something for a man who’s coached the likes of Andre Agassi, Lleyton Hewitt and current world No. 1 Simona Halep; who’s spent the better part of his 52 years on or around a tennis court.

Nadal often talks about the “suffering” players endure on the court; how you manage it, how you problem-solve when your body is being pushed to its very limits. But of his four-hour, 49-minute, 0-6, 6-4, 7-5, 6-7, 7-6 saga against Thiem in Flushing Meadows -- a see-it-to-believe-it spectacle of sustained excellence that lingered until 2:04 a.m. local time and had ticketholders repeatedly elbowing each other in disbelief -- the 32-year-old Mallorcan said suffering was an inefficient description for what both he and his vanquished foe had experienced, to him a “light word.” No, for this occasion, torment, martyrdom, might be more appropriate.

The first set alone — only the fourth time in his storied Grand Slam history that he had been force-fed a bagel — says so much about Nadal’s character, his inner belief. Thiem, after all, was zoning like few players have ever zoned before; taking full-orbit hacks at the ball and finding lines, corners, nearly every time. Of the opener, commentator John McEnroe would say, “It was the set you dream of, when everything works.”

Of course, it was Nadal who forced the Austrian to employ such a high-risk/high-reward approach in the first place. Was Thiem really going to go toe-to-toe from the baseline with the grinder of all grinders, playing patient tennis with a player against whom he was 3-7? Or was the 25-year-old going to go for broke, hitting through the court with at-times reckless abandon. The latter was his only choice, of course, and to the amazement of those in attendance, those watching from the comfort of their air-conditioned living rooms, it worked.

play video AI Match Highlight: Nadal vs. Thiem - QF

We’d seen Nadal’s career-long rival Roger Federer immobilized by the late-summer humidity and an inspired journeyman named John Millman one night earlier. Was Rafa now on his way out, too?

By now, you know the story. Nadal, like he has done so many times before, found a way to weather the storm. Even when he muffed an easy forehand volley with his opponent serving at 5-6 in the fourth set, which would have set up a match point, he didn’t give in. The message, as the Curtis Mayfield-led Impressions sang of back in ’64, was clear: Keep. On. Pushing. When the Spaniard finally closed it out in the fifth, not only had we gained a new appreciation for Dominic Thiem, who played at such a high level that he might have interfered with traffic in and out of LaGuardia, we were only further convinced of Rafael Nadal’s sublime greatness.     

“I’m not the guy that looks at the string or looks at the box or looks at the racquet. I’m the guy to look at myself,”

So moved was Chris Evert, once a steely competitor herself (hence her nickname, The Ice Maiden), that she would call Nadal “the greatest competitor in any sport.” And who are we to disagree? Step aside, LeBron. Buzz off, Brady. Get lost, Messi, Ronaldo.

“I’m not the guy that looks at the string or looks at the box or looks at the racquet. I’m the guy to look at myself,” said Nadal. “Nothing about the string. Nothing about the tension. Just about my negative level in the beginning of the match. I needed to move forward, to change the dynamic, and I did. But the first step to change that dynamic is not to find an excuse with the racquet or the string or something that’s not true.The only truth is that you have to do things better to be able to fight for the points and fight for the match.”

When it was all over, Nadal — who for the third consecutive Slam earned a showdown with Argentine Juan Martin del Potro — would remove his sweat-soaked headband and dog-shake his hair, as he always does, then do something off-script: he hurdled the net, jogged forward and embraced his opponent, fully aware of just how much heart Thiem had poured into the battle. Nadal could relate; he’d given some of his own, too.

“It's cruel sometimes, tennis, because I think this match didn't really deserve a loser,” Thiem said afterward. “But there has to be one.”

Over lunch this week, Mats Wilander, who reached consecutive US Open finals in 1987-88, winning in his second appearance, spoke of the importance of respecting your opponent; how that characteristic has played a vital role in the careers of world-beaters like Nadal. By embracing Thiem, Nadal was putting that respect into practice for all to see. Of course, he’d earned ours long ago.