Ricardas Berankis is Lithuanian and is 32 years old and has 36 appearances in Grand Slam tournaments. And in that long journey, he has never made it past the third round of a major.
If we limit his statistics to Wimbledon, the data decreases more. Never, in his nine appearances at the All England, has he gone beyond the second chapter.
That is his record.
Let's not fool ourselves: they are remarkable numbers (what tennis player has not dreamed of playing a single Grand Slam?), but they are little when the silhouette of Rafael Nadal, the giant of the 22 major titles, appears on the other side of the net.
Under those wickers, an asymmetrical compromise was lit up yesterday: perhaps it was too much for Berankis's body, who was already assuming his sad destiny at the end of the first set, when the man from Manacor broke his serve and opened up a body to him, and I looked even worse at the end of the second quarter, for exactly the same reason.
Even so, not even in this way did the Lithuanian give up, a Stakhanovite who fought and fought until he appropriated the third set.
Up to this point.
Nadal went up one more point.
And so, without losing his life and without letting himself be affected by the one-hour break due to the rain, the legend closed the match (6-4, 6-4, 4-6 and 6-3, in 3h02m) and headed towards the third round of Wimbledon, where Berankis (currently the 106th racket in the world) has never been, where Lorenzo Sonego, now a middleweight on the circuit, awaits him.
(A statistic illustrates what was happening this Thursday at Wimbledon: Nadal hasn't lost to a rival ranked lower than 106th for eight years. You have to go back to 2014: in those Wimbledon round of 16 he had been knocked down by the now reborn and challenger Nick Kyrgios, then the 144th on the circuit)
Well, here is Nadal.
And everything is taking on the aroma of the unmistakable.
How many similar processes have we experienced in the last fifteen years: without the Russians (neither Medvedev, nor Rublev, nor Kachanov, nor Karatsev, banned from London on account of the war in Ukraine), without Zverev (his torn ligaments still hurts when remembered ), without Auger-Aliassime (dispatched by Cressy in his debut) and without the confined Berrettini (finalist last year in London), Bautista (semi-finalist in 2019) and Cilic (finalist in 2017 and semifinalist this year in Paris), Nadal has climbed onto his float and once again advances contemplating the miseries that spread around him.
And no one talks about his battered left foot anymore. This matter has been parked, we will recover it in a few weeks.
(...)
Nadal is no longer a runaway morlaco.
It is not that long-haired phenomenon in pirate pants and suspenders, all color, who entered the track jumping, intimidating rivals from the first blow. Now he is more calm, a mature man and a wise tennis player who consumes just enough, as much as a diesel, and only releases the blow when he corresponds.
This Nadal keeps things and barely runs the least, lest his foot suffer (there is no problem there, but let's not wake up the devil either)
And yet, he plays Nadal-style tennis.
He does it even at Wimbledon: Nadal barely goes to the net. He sticks to the back of the court and drags out the exchanges as long as he can. He maintains his patience, he almost never tries the serve-volley, he barely modifies some things in his service (against Berankis he signed thirteen aces, more than usual). Nadal is not and will not be a Wimbledon tennis player.
And that?
Well, it still looks great.
