By Chris Oddo | @TheFanChild | Monday January 31, 2022
The problem solving skills of Ash Barty and Rafael Nadal delighted the purists on the final weekend of the Australian Open.
Photo Source: Getty
The final weekend of the 2022 Australian Open was all about problem solving, and that is why many of us, subconsciously or otherwise, are basking in the afterglow and feeling - surprisingly - happy about the Happy Slam. (Lots of other reasons as well - the tennis was fantastic in Melbourne and made many of us - at least temporarily - forget the tournament’s regrettable prelude).
Saturday was an all-out assault of the feel goods, Aussie style, inside Rod Laver Arena. Ash Barty smashed through the barrier that had loomed as large as the Great Wall of China for 44 years in Melbourne, and put forth a stoic, scintillating performance for the ages to cap off a title run for the ages.
Not only did Barty only drop 30 games over the course of the fortnight, the fifth-lowest total at a Grand Slam this century, she did it like Beth Harmon in Queen’s Gambit, masterfully pushing and pulling her knights, bishops and rooks and eventually transforming her opponent into a reluctant pawn in Barty’s game of Queens.
Barty finishes the week anointed, the clutch combatant who could, after spending the fortnight outfoxing - and outserving - her would-be conquerors, who were, much to their chagrin, tied in knots, boxed up and shipped out by a rare and efficient species of tennis player. Barty is a unique force in the sport at the moment, she’s crafted an arsenal of shots, stunning in variety, that can be organized into a shrewd, cunning game plan, and used as an element of tennis torture.
She’s a classic problem solver; the phrase tennis IQ was practically made to describe her.
A brief pause for a note on the “problem solver”: in order to be a problem solver one must possess the full spectrum of strokes in one’s pocket, as well as the capacity to deliver them consistently to different locations on the court (with different trajectory and pace as the need arises) and the clear-headedness to deploy said strokes at certain junctures of the match so they may produce the maximum effect.
Barty did this with relentless ease in Australia. As the saying goes: she ticked every box and then some.
Her opponent in Saturday’s final, Danielle Collins, had spent six rounds calling all the shots in her matches like a true tennis dominatrix. But the seventh match wasn't a charm for the demonstrative talent. She suddenly found herself on a string being whipped around by every impulse of Barty in the final. Think about all the ways that Barty’s expertise affected Collins: the American’s footwork patterns got scrambled as she was forced to take longer, more circuitous journeys to the ball before making contact; Collins was lured into the mid-court and therefore was forced to produce different trajectories while going for shorter depth.
She was out of her comfort zone, just like Madison Keys had been two days earlier against Barty. The American would have loved to camp out on the baseline and play whack-a-mole, and she likely would have won the final if she did, but Barty ensured that Collins was not only forbidden to stay camped out on her baseline, she also would have to spend her precious time responding to dizzying array of lobs, or chasing down crazy-angled forehands, set up by slice to the backhand, that spun angrily into the open crosscourt.
Frequently out of position and lunging, Collins admirably defended and reacted. She even built a 5-1 lead in the second set, despite the fact that she probably felt that she was playing a different sport against Barty than she had in the first six rounds.
And that’s how Barty wore her down, all the Aussie’s guile and tactics paying off as she marched through the final six games of the match to the finish line - the promised land.
"I love being an Aussie," Barty told the crowd.
The crowd roared - the feelings were mutual.
The Aussie finished the match like a ghost in Collins’ machine, embodying one of the all-time great tennis clichés: you don’t have to play all that great provided that you make your opponent play bad. (She played great, don't get me wrong).
Rafael Nadal took the court on the following evening to continue the problem solving clinic. We study the Spaniard’s methods with more of a big picture lens than micro; Nadal’s quest was to find a way to be the ghost in his own machine. He needed to find a way to reinvent his body, pain-free, exuberant and ready to do Rafa things from first ball to last on Sunday, after 17 hours of court time in six rounds.
It is no no secret that the legendary King of Clay, who now stands alone atop the men’s singles Grand Slam titles list for the first time, had to go through his own personal hell and back over the last five months.
Nadal cried tears of elation after his semifinal victory over Matteo Berrettini and later went into great detail about the suffering he had to endure to get healthy in time for Australia. He told the press that he had contemplated the end of his career with his team, but was sucked back into the thrill of playing the game of tennis, because for Nadal - at least for the moment - tennis is life.
Somehow Nadal found a way, against what he perceived to be all odds. We pundits can agree on this. How many of you, in early January, thought that the great Rafael Nadal, now 35 and coming off a Slamless season with an injury cloud, would finish the month undefeated?
Nadal first had to conquer his body and, simultaneously, his demons. Then, lacking competitive matches for five months, and only recently having recovered from Covid, he had to summon the magic of yesteryear, at an event that has always been more of a dark, blurry nightmare than a lucid dream to him. He had to play himself into form, match by match. Not just any form, but comeback from two sets to love down against an absolute phenom that is ten years younger than you form.
And he did it - the ultimate nagging, career-threatening problem, solved!
There was also plenty of high-level chess going on in Nadal’s epic win on Sunday night. How he adapted his game, throwing in drop shots to force Daniil Medvedev to keep his court positioning honest, then revved up the backhand down the line, which started the match at room temperature and finished height-of-Melbourne-summer sizzling hot.
How he used every bit of processing power in every cell of his tennis brain, playing every point with purpose, angling for the advantage and never letting go of the belief that one point could change the match; one moment, one escape from love-40 in the third, one break of serve late in the fifth, no matter how inevitable it seemed that the Aussie Open final curse would never be lifted, could be the gateway to victory.
Nadal versus Medvedev, like Barty versus Collins, was the steadier, more intractable pillar. More often than we realize, we are what we project, and Nadal and Barty projected something invincible this weekend as they rose to the challenge and experienced the sweetest reward for the decades of dedication that led to this shining moment . For years, each has put the hard hat on and gone to work on constructing an archetype for long-term success. They are both more than willing to accept the fact that there are no guarantees, with the stakes as high as they are at the Grand Slams, but neither ever wavers from their path or shies away from failure.
Honor the game, honor those who help you get where you are, develop the weapons, fine-tune the tools and block out the noise that says you can’t win.
Nadal and Barty created their blueprint for success long before this tournament, and when it was time to execute there was no hesitation.
And yeah, it was friggin awesome.