It’s very simple. On 20 October 2006, Tomas Berdych, ranked 11th, beats Rafael Nadal, ranked 2nd, defending champion and playing at home, 6-3, 7-6 in the quarter-finals in Madrid. On indoor hard. Nobody wanted to see it, I did.
I looked at the numbers, not the rankings. Berdych had lost the first meeting in Bastad in 2004, then won in Cincinnati in 2005, then in Montreal in 2006. He had beaten Federer, world number one, at the Athens Olympics, and won Bercy in 2005 against Ljubicic. With that record, a quarter-final in Madrid was written. In ninety percent of cases, and I’m being kind.
In the second set, the crowd applauds his errors as well as Nadal’s winners. Berdych gets annoyed. Afterwards he said: “I understand they want to see him win the match and the tournament, but this is not the Davis Cup, where you can expect that.” It’s exactly what I’ve been saying for years, nobody listens to me: the crowd should know which competition it’s in.
Me, in Kitzbühel, in ’92, against my future top 10, the stand applauded my double faults. Well, the stand. There was his sister and a gentleman with a dog. I won the set. Or the game, the context was different.
Match point in the tie-break: Berdych celebrates it by imitating Nadal’s way of geeing himself up, then finishes with a service winner. And before the handshake, the finger to the lips, aimed at the crowd. Careful, I’m not saying it’s elegant. I’m clarifying that it’s effective, but it doesn’t get learned in a day.
In Couvin, nobody shushed anyone except in church. And that was the priest.
3-1 in the head-to-head, that night. I said it back in Bastad, you know. All right?
It’s true, we checked: Tennis Majors (FR).
