It's His Year, but Nadal Is Pleased to Win One for His People
Rafael Nadal's gold medal is the first ever for Spain in Olympic tennis.
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Olympics 2008
Go to Complete Coverage »There was Rafael Nadal in his standard pose of definitive triumph, flat on his back, arms spread wide, perspiration-soaked mane staining the hard court he had just mopped with another dizzied opponent.
A familiar look, a different feeling. "For tennis, the slams are more important," Nadal said. "For sportsmen, the Olympics are more important. I win here for a lot of people, not just for me."
He really seemed to get the communal aspect of the Games, understood why they were worth the round-the-world effort so close to the United States Open. He spent two weeks in the athletes' village. He signed autographs for fellow competitors, palled around with his colleagues from Spain, that new titan on the world sports stage.
On Sunday night, Juan Antonio Samaranch, the Spaniard and former International Olympic Committee president, gave Nadal a gold medal for his trouble, and Nadal's eyes were glassy when the Spanish flag was raised.
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Peaking with what he called "an almost perfect match," defeating Fernando González of Chile, 6-3, 7-6 (2), 6-3, Nadal added an Olympic coronation to his first Wimbledon crown and the No. 1 ranking that will be official Monday as he jets to New York for the next Grand Slam stop on the 2008 calendar that has carried him to the top.
If he wins there as the top seed, he will own three of the year's four major tournament victories, the elusive back-to-back double on clay (French Open) and grass (Wimbledon), titles on all three Grand Slam surfaces with the medal here serving as the icing on his itinerary. And the right to say he has displaced the player who scant months ago was being hailed as the greatest in tennis history.
Has anyone in recent memory had a tennis year that comprehensively dominant? Not Roger Federer, if that's what you're thinking.
Federer's strange regression from tennis immortal to second-best player in the world to disconcertingly beatable on any given night continued in Beijing, but he was last seen in a horizontal embrace with his Swiss countryman Stanislas Wawrinka after winning the gold medal in doubles Saturday night. It was good to see Federer happy again, and attaching significance to what might have been taken as modest reward to someone used to the spoils now going to Nadal.
Nadal and Federer weren't the only tennis megamillionaires here to demonstrate appreciation for Olympic currency. Novak Djokovic of Serbia kissed his bronze medal on the stand, a far cry from the little Swedish baby in Greco-Roman wrestling who was called out by the I.O.C. for abusing his bronze medal and stripped of it.
On the women's side, Elena Dementieva squealed after winning singles gold, calling it "the best thing that's happened to me in my life."
Venus Williams, in particular, beamed throughout the ceremony for the doubles gold she won with her sister Serena.
In past Summer Games, the tennis community never gave us great motivation to voice sentiment for its continued inclusion with spotty player attendance. Maybe the willingness of the leading men's players to enthusiastically fit Beijing into their compelling, unfolding drama at the top set a tone.
Maybe once everyone arrived, they were inspired by the Michael Phelps phenomenon.
There remains some reluctance to endorse tennis as forever Olympian, if only because that encourages the bureaucrats and corporate underwriters to push for enhanced star power — big-name golfers, for starters — while turning their backs on the likes of the earnest softball players, for whom this is not only Broadway but the most effective vehicle for continued global development.
And yet it was impossible not to appreciate Nadal on Sunday, when he was threatened by González only briefly, facing double-set point in the second set. González set up the first one beautifully, but missed wide on a makeable backhand volley. As Federer knows better than most, Nadal, while respectful of his peers, is adept at slamming doors in their faces.
González soon found himself on the wrong end of a 7-2 tie breaker and with a noose around his neck that soon was replaced by a more acceptable silver medal.
"He's hitting many, many balls back," González said of Nadal, as unembellished but effective summation of the Nadal conundrum as any.
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For Spain, his charming boyishness and unpretentious chatter in his improving English provided some ambassadorial relief after the recent flap over the basketball team's slant-eye commercial photo shoot.
Nadal proudly noted that Spain has been on an unprecedented roll of big-ticket event success, but though Americans may not fathom a tennis player as a national hero, Nadal's standing there is high and rising, like him in the rankings.
As for becoming No. 1, he doesn't anticipate additional pressure, if only because he plans on continuing to play every point as if he is leasing, not buying.
"Probably I'm going to be No. 2 another time in a few months," he said. Then smiling, he added, "You never know, no?"
No, you don't. But who right now would bet on that?
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