By Greg Garber
ESPN.com
WIMBLEDON, England -- His left-handed forehand is a flash of wrist followed by a blur. His down-soft hands render volleys of exquisite quality. His quickness, powered by muscular legs, is astonishing, His gaze is defiant, approaching disdainful.
The only thing that belies Rafael Nadal's age is the dark mauve acne that has erupted around his angular cheekbones. He passed his 17th birthday on June 3. Chronologically, he is a boy. Historically, he is a prodigy.
His early accomplishments in his first Grand Slam tournament here at the All England Club have a championship pedigree:
In his third-round match against Paradorn Srichaphan, Nadal was bidding to become the second-youngest player to reach the men's singles round of 16 in the Open Era. He would have missed Bjorn Borg's 1973 record by a scant three days.
The youngest player in the men's field, Nadal was already the youngest to reach the third round since 16-year-old Boris Becker did it in 1984, the year before his 1985 victory at Wimbledon.
He is already ranked No. 76 on the ATP, and this week's run should propel him higher. In April, he became the first 16-year-old to crack the top 100 since Michael Chang in 1988.
His forehand has been compared to Rod Laver's, and there is a growing consensus that Nadal has a good chance to one day become the world's best player. Nike and the International Management Group have already settled in for a long, presumably profitable ride.
On Friday, however, Srichaphan was too good, too strong. The No. 12 seed handled Nadal 6-4, 6-4, 6-2 to advance to the round of 16, where Andy Roddick awaits. While Roddick, the No. 5 seed, is seen as the phenom of this tournament, consider that he is nearly three years and nine months older than Nadal.
When Roddick was Nadal's age, he played in three U.S. Futures tournaments and lost in the first round of each.
Nadal lives on the island of Majorca, Spain. When he was 15, he played in an exhibition along with Majorca native Carlos Moya, Boris Becker and Pat Cash -- Grand Slam champions all. When Nadal stunned Cash in an earnest three-set match, they had all seen the future.
"I have never seen a better Spanish player at the same age," Moya says, gravely.
This not your father's Spanish dirt-baller, though. While there is a decided clay-grooved loop to his game, Nadal -- unlike Moya and French Open champion Albert Costa -- can flatten it out on grass. The next generation always seems to understand that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line.
"I think it's changing right now. Spanish players are starting to get good results on these kind of surfaces," Nadal said after his second-round victory over Olivier Mutis. "You can see that especially from the young players coming up that have the interest to play on these surfaces and want to develop their games. I think that's good for tennis."
And no one wants it more badly than Nadal. Although Friday's match was only the third of his professional career on grass, he is the first Spanish player to declare that he would rather when Wimbledon than the French Open. Manuel Santana was the last Spaniard to do it, in 1967.
He has already beaten his idols. Nadal was forced to qualify at Monte Carlo, then beat Costa in the second round. He qualified again at Hamburg, then took out Moya himself in the second round.
It has been a wild, wild ascent. There were Challengers -- in exotic places like Barletta, Cherbourg, Cagliari and Aix-En-Provence -- and now Wimbledon, where he lost only one set in his first two matches. Nadal would have made his Grand Slam debut at the French Open if he hadn't fallen trying to run down a backhand in Majorca the night before he was to leave for Paris.
He is expected to grow a few more inches. His uncle, Miguel Angel, was a famous soccer player for FC Barcelona and the Spanish national team. Another uncle, Toni, first put the racket in his hand at the age of 4 and remains his coach today. He will grow stronger, too; the serves of Srichaphan, seven years older than Nadal, were usually 15 miles an hour faster.
"If I want to win more matches, I have to work my serve and develop that weapon," Nadal said. "I'm OK from the back of the court, but I really have to improve my serve. If I had the same serve as some of these top guys, I would win more matches."
Just wait.
In some respects, he acts like a 17-year-old. Nadal wears a broad white headband, and his long dark hair flies all over the place. His diet consists almost exclusively of peanuts and potato chips.
Against Srichaphan, he demonstrated a childlike enthusiasm, a level of excitement that sometimes costs him points. In the first set, he ran down a lob and sliced it back through his legs. In the third, with all hope of winning the match gone, he was breaking to his right to cover the court when Srichaphan put the ball behind him. Nadal stopped, actually slid on the grass, set himself, then dived for the ball.
Sailing prone, three feet above the baseline, Nadal didn't get it. Still, it was a Beckeresque moment. There will be many more.
Greg Garber is a senior writer for ESPN.com.
**Thanks for the article, Chen. Please do not copy or use on other sites without giving credit to both the original source and VamosRafael.com**
Return to VamosRafael.com.
Return to VamosRafael.com Articles
.