The best tennis players—even when competing on their favorite court—usually have at least one humiliation they’d rather forget.
For eight-time Wimbledon champion Roger Federer, it was a SW19 second-round loss to then-world No. 116 Sergey Stakhovsky in 2013. Eleven years earlier, seven-time Wimbledon champion Pete Sampras was knocked out at the same stage by lucky loser George Bustle. world No. 145. Novak Djokovic’s worst moment also came at his best tournament, losing to world No. 117 Denis Istomin in 2017 at the Australian Open, an event he has won 10 times.
An exception to this rule is Rafael Nadal.
At the French Open, where he is a 14-time champion, Nadal has been beaten by only two players. One is Djokovic, statistically the best male player of all time. The other is Robin Soderling. The loss to Soderling is the closest Nadal has come to his ‘Bastle moment’ at Roland Garros, but it was still a round of 16 match – and the opponent was a nobody. Soderling was the 23rd seed and would eventually become a top 4 player and two-time French Open finalist.
It was a different kind of upset, and overall Nadal’s near-flawless record of 112-3 in Paris feels sacred, one he doesn’t want to be desecrated with an inconclusive defeat by an unkind player.
All of this must weigh on Nadal’s thinking as he conducts a sharp will-he-won’t-he dance ahead of the 2024 tournament.
On Monday, April 15, he confirmed that the ATP 500 in Barcelona would mark his return from the hip and abdominal injuries that have kept him out since January in Brisbane, in what was his first event in almost a year. His first match is on Tuesday, April 16 against Italian and world number 62 Flavio Cobolli.
Speaking at a press conference ahead of the event, he was cautiously optimistic. “I decided to come here at the last minute, but it’s been a positive week.”
“The question is can I or can’t I?” Two difficult years ahead – my body does not allow me to follow the calendar.
“I don’t know what may happen in the future, but I look at this as my last appearance in El Godo (Barcelona Open). I don’t want to stop being competitive. There have been a lot of tough days, physically and mentally, but the good days make up for it,” he said.
Nadal is desperate to get fit again, urging his fans that “you have no idea how hard it is for me not to be able to play these events” after pulling out of Monte Carlo. He needs matches, not just for fitness, but for momentum, to build the muscle memory and match practice that even veterans of his talent need when it comes time for a Grand Slam.
There is one but. Matches mean injury risk, and injury risk means Roland Garros risk.
He does not want to do any of this without feeling confident that he will not be exposed to the humiliating defeat mentioned above. As Andy Murray, Nadal’s near-contemporary, said, it’s about competing, not just playing. Murray also spent much of the year making tough decisions about how much more punishment he could take – physically and mentally – as injuries recurred and defeats against players he remembers being sidelined.
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In that context, it’s understandable that Nadal puts a huge amount of thought into every decision he makes during a clay court season where he remains the talk of the town without even playing. His statements are like someone saying he can come to the party you’re asking him about but can’t commit yet.
The build-up to this Barcelona decision was carefully managed.
“First practice… I’m excited to be here a few days before the tournament starts,” Nadal said upon his arrival in the city. “I’m here to see how it goes, with the desire to try to play. I’ll let you know. It is important to say that I do not want to confirm that I will play, but I hope so. We will see.”
On Friday, April 12, he added in another post: “Barcelona today Thursday. Training #2. Step by step.” In another, simply the word “Barcelona” with a smiley face accompanied by him sitting on a bench.
The open practice sessions are staged, with Nadal hitting groundstrokes under the watchful eye of supporters and media, but not serving or moving sideways in the explosive manner he is known for – the areas of his game said to be the most -affected by his trauma. Last week, Toni Nadal told Spanish newspaper Marca that he felt pain when serving but had no other problem. A 6-1 practice set defeat by world No. 6 Andrei Rublev on Saturday 13 April was the most encouraging sign in his game since his last competitive appearance on the court in Brisbane in January; a shortened serving motion designed to reduce the stress on his lower body, less. When he takes to the court on Tuesday, all eyes will be on his form.
Nadal is not valued. He’s had a lot of major concussions throughout his career – they’ve just never happened on clay.
For a while, humiliating losses at Wimbledon were almost a daily occurrence.
World No. 100 Lucas Rossol in 2012. World No. 135 Steve Darcis in 2013. World No. 144 and 19-year-old Nick Kyrgios in 2014. World No. 102 Dustin Brown in 2015.
These were all extremely painful losses for Nadal, which dented his aura of invincibility and ultimately led to the worst two seasons of his career, in 2015 and 2016. Such defeats over the next few weeks would not have that impact. This is expected to be Nadal’s last year on tour, whether he plays at Roland Garros or not.
Timing still matters, because in recent years Nadal has seen his peers suffer at a similar point in their careers to the one he’s arriving at now.
Serena Williams’ penultimate appearance at Wimbledon saw her retire with injury six games into her first-round match against Aleksandra Sasnovich in 2021. At the same tournament, Federer played the final singles match of his career, taking the only set ever lost at love at Wimbledon. He later said of the 6-3, 7-6, 6-0 quarterfinal loss to Hubert Hurkacz: “TThe end of that match was one of the worst moments of my career because I really felt terrible. It was over, the knee was gone.”
The following year, seven-time Wimbledon champion Williams played her final match at the tournament, losing in the first round to world number 115 Harmony Tan. Sampras’ defeat by Bustle, meanwhile, was his last match at Wimbledon, a humiliation suffered in the dead-ends of Court No. 2.
Nadal shares the inevitability of time and decline with his fellow greats. What sets him apart is that for someone as dominant as he has been on clay, any defeat on the surface at all will feel like a personal affront, a reminder of what has been lost.
Those absurd 14 Roland Garros titles are no mean feat – he has 12 at the Barcelona Open, 11 at the Monte Carlo and 10 at the Italian Open. He is so synonymous with the event in Barcelona that the main court there is named after him. Ranking points, 500 and 1000 points aside, the pressure to return to a surface you made your own, a tournament you’ve routinely won, a court that literally bears your name, and suffer a sobering defeat is almost absurd, I understand .
It is a risk he has chosen to take.
The reality is that Nadal could lose in the first round of Roland Garros without winning a single game, and it is unlikely to tarnish his unrivaled legacy at the tournament. But try telling that to the most ferocious competitor that tennis, perhaps any sport, has ever seen. Defeat at the 2024 French Open would take his tournament losing percentage from 2.6% to 3.4% over 19 campaigns.
It is an infinitesimal speck, barely a single trace of the ball on a court of pure triumph.
For Nadal, even more than the watching world, that remains almost unthinkable.
(Photo: Tim Clayton/Corbis via Getty Images)
