Many of sold-out crowd that had filled Arthur Ashe Stadium had already made it home and were watching on television as Friday night turned to Saturday morning and the biggest shocker of this year's US Open hung in the balance. Earlier they'd made beelines for the exits after Rafael Nadal had taken a two-set lead over the Italian Fabio Fognini, a scoreline portending an outcome as certain as potholes on the BQE. One hundred fifty one times had Nadal won the first two sets of a best-of-five-sets match, and 151 times he'd seen it through to victory.
But the few thousand spectators who still peppered the stands when Nadal sprayed a backhand wide at 1.26am were there for one of the great comebacks in the history of the US Open as Fognini, the 28-year-old clay-court specialist whose emotional and mental frailty has for years dwarfed his prodigious talent, finished off an improbable 3-6, 4-6, 6-4, 6-3, 6-4 win over the eighth-seeded Spaniard in the third round of the season’s last grand slam.
The most important win of Fognini's career is to be sure a devastating blow to the two-time US Open champion, despite Nadal's straight-faced assurances that it was "just another loss" and "not tougher" than any other during a subdued post-match press conference. For the first time in 11 years he will finish a season without having won at least one grand slam title. He opened the year at No3 and dropped as low as No10, losing in the Australian Open and French Open quarter-finals and the second round of Wimbledon. Not since a 2005 loss to James Blake has the 14-times major winner crashed out this early at Flushing Meadows.
“He’s a player with a great talent, with huge shots, and he played amazing shots,” Nadal said afterward. “But what I am doing worse is playing worse than what I used to do the last couple of years. That’s it.
“We can be talking for one hour trying to create a reason. But the sport for me is simple, no? If you are playing with less confidence and you are hitting balls without creating the damage on the opponent that I believe I should do, then they have the possibility to attack.”
And attack Fognini did. The No32 seed crushed 70 winners against 58 unforced errors in a relentless display of predatory tennis, leaving Nadal (30 winners, 18 unforced errors) comparatively muted. The dashing, mercurial Italian bore little resemblance to the temperamental underachiever who, incredibly, entered the US Open with a record of seven losses in seven hard-court matches this year.
“With Rafa you have to try that,” explained Fognini, who twice defeated Nadal earlier this season before coming up short when they met in the Hamburg final. “Because otherwise if you run, he start running at the beginning and you finish at the end of the week. It’s not easy.”
Let it be said Nadal didn’t lose Friday’s match, Fognini won it. He ran the 29-year-old Mallorcan ragged with sharp, angled groundstrokes from the baseline and deft touched volleys at the net. He crushed 20 of his 70 winners in a compelling, bizarre fifth set that included seven consecutive breaks of serve before Fognini finally held at 5-4 for a place in the fourth round.
How dire it had looked an hour and a half earlier after Fognini had fallen behind a break in the third. “I was saying, ‘OK, let’s try,’” he recalled. “But two sets to zero against Rafa, maybe you have to go to Lourdes.”
Yet on a temperate night in the world's biggest tennis stadium, the finishing kick that had seen Nadal through on so many occasions through the years was absent when needed most. He surrendered break leads in the third and fourth before failing three times to consolidate service breaks in the decider. With Tiger Woods watching down from Nadal's player box – one 14-time major champion in support of another – Fognini's high-risk tennis chipped away at the Spaniard's advantage until it ceased to exist.
After three hours and 46 minutes it was finished, but Nadal was adamant that his US Open represented progress at the end of a trying season that’s shaken his confidence to its foundation.
“Is another loss,” he said. “Not tougher. As I tell, you know, my mind allows me to fight until the end. Is something that I was missing for a while, that feeling that I am there.
“For the nerves, for the anxious that I had for a long time this season, I was not able to do it. I was not able to be fighting the way that I was fighting today. So is an improvement for me. I take that like a positive thing and I know what I have to do. I going to work on it.”
Fognini, the first Italian in the last 16 of the US Open since Davide Sanguinetti a decade ago, advances to a fourth-round meeting with No22 seed Feliciano Lopez, an upset winner earlier Friday over 10th-seeded Milos Raonic. Nadal said he'd "probably" play in Spain's forthcoming Davis Cup tie in Denmark and fall tournaments in Beijing, Shanghai, Basel and Paris with the hopes of qualifying for the ATP World Tour Finals in London.
The world No8, who bristled openly this week at mentions of his decline, remains optimistic as he looks ahead to an Australian Open that will be the last grand slam decided he turns 30 next June.
“Accept that was not my year and keep fighting till the end of the season to finish in a positive way for me,” he said. “Finish the season with the feeling that I improved something from the beginning of the season. That’s something that I think I am doing.”
(Guardian service)
