Spanish prodigy makes light work of Britain's third man
Jim White
Thursday June 26, 2024
The Guardian
Since Rafael Nadal hails from Majorca he should be used to Britons staggering around in the sun, not quite able to coordinate. Which is probably why he made such quick and easy work of Lee Childs, the third British man to reach this year's second round and the first to depart at that point. Nadal won 6-2, 6-4, 6-3, a score that barely does justice to the Spaniard's superiority.
Nadal turned 17 a fortnight ago, is in his embryonic season on the senior tour and was last seen at Wimbledon in the semi-final of last year's junior tournament. But any suggestion that this was a boy playing a man's game was immediately dispelled. Not since Boris Becker in 1985 has a 17-year-old appeared quite as equipped for progress at Wimbledon. He looked good enough, mature enough, hard enough to go a long way.
The narrow-eyed manner in which he approached his game would have struck a chord with his uncle, Miguel Angel Nadal, the uncompromising Spanish centre-back who gloried in the sobriquet the Beast of Barcelona.
Childs is a bit of a youthful prodigy himself or at least what passes for one in this country. Almost exactly four years older than Nadal, he shares a similar record of excellence in junior competition. The difference is, while Nadal has been stepping up to beat the likes of Albert Costa and Juan Carlos Moya on the senior tour, Childs is stuck on the ITF Futures circuit, among the other youthful wannabes and never-will-bes. True, he was British champion in 2001. But then, give a plastic dustbin a racket and it could make it to the semis of that particular competition.
Childs arrived on court wearing a faceful of stubble, as if to remind his opponent who was the daddy round here. Nadal's cheeks may have been covered in teenage acne but he was not remotely over-wrought. Still, Childs had beaten the No33 seed Nikolay Davydenko in the first round in a five-setter and started off as if he was carrying on from that win. He took Nadal's first service game to 40, then won his own to love.
It turned out that the new sporting hero of Majorca was merely finding his length. The junior Nadal is far less emotionally demonstrative that other Spanish players. He does, though, have his tics. There is clearly a pattern to the way he approaches a serve, for instance. He takes three balls, examines them, discards one, shakes the strands of hair that have not been corralled by his headband out of his eyes, tugs at his headband and then - and only then - serves.
When the momentum of the game is up in the air, however, he wastes no time seizing it. The crucial point in the first set was in only the third game.
Childs, looking confident, smashed a Nadal lob and was almost walking back to the baseline to serve again when he saw it returned in a vicious arc behind him. Nadal clenched his fist and shouted "si". From that moment he raced into a two-set lead.
Childs, while capable of the occasional blistering ace, just never looked as though he could break serve.
But then, after 90 minutes of one-way traffic, the Briton suddenly found a way through, finally breaking the Spaniard's serve twice, and had reduced his opponent to Rusedski-style delaying tactics - constantly calling for a towel to dab at non-existent sweat - when an unlikely ally came Nadal's way: it rained, not for long but enough to snap Childs's concentration. Thirteen minutes after they returned the Spaniard completed his straight-sets demolition.
"I think it [the rain] came at a good moment for me because I think he was hot at that moment," he admitted afterwards.
Skill, resolve and a hotline to the meteorological gods: for Nadal the future is arriving so quickly he would be advised to get out of the way before it runs him over. For Childs it is back to the Futures circuit, leaving the rest of us to wait a little longer for the next big thing in British tennis.
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