It was, quite literally, an occasion for holding on to your hat. Rafael Nadal survived a desert storm and a storming performance in the desert from Carlos Alcaraz to subdue his fellow Spaniard 6-4, 4-6, 6-3 and reach his fifth final in Indian Wells.
In an absorbing, seesaw collision between the sport’s present and future, Nadal endured three hours and 12 minutes of relentless toil to see off Alcaraz, the buccaneering 18-year-old whom he demolished for the loss of just three games in their first meeting in Madrid last spring. The Spaniard, who extended his unbeaten run to 20 matches, will now seek his fourth title of an unbeaten season against local favourite Taylor Fritz, who upset seventh seed Andrey Rublev in straight sets.
High winds that sent towels and debris flying across the court threatened to blow Nadal’s unblemished campaign off course, however, with chair umpire Kader Nouni appealing to spectators to hold on to their belongings as the second set descended into near farce.
“The problem in tennis is we don’t have a ruling for that,” said Nadal, whose renowned ability to prosper in gusty conditions, honed on his home island of Mallorca was sorely tested.
“There is no ruling for wind. There is no ruling saying after X miles an hour we should suspend the match. I tell you one thing, I enjoy a lot of times playing with wind, because for me it’s a challenge. It’s like playing golf with a lot of wind. I mean, we’re going to have mistakes. The level will not be that high. But it’s about try to find solutions all the time.
“The only thing I don’t enjoy is when we have to stop all the time because some papers are in, then the net is moving, then the towel is flying. It becomes unplayable for me. Another tough thing today, in my opinion, was sand. It was a sandstorm, it wasn’t all about the wind. On the eyes have been very difficult, no? I started to feel the sand on my eyes. That was hurting a little bit.”
Before the sandstorm arrived, a human whirlwind swept through the Indian Wells Tennis Garden that proved every bit as painful for Nadal. It took just two games for Alcaraz to demonstrate the range and quality of a game so accomplished that former world No 1s – Andy Murray, Martina Navratilova, Mats Wilander, Yevgeny Kafelnikov, the list goes on – have long since been lining up to tip him as a top-ranked player of the future.
As the opening exchanges demonstrated, there is little hyperbole in such claims. Alcaraz began like a force of nature, clubbing the ball with irresistible power and length to break Nadal at a canter. The blistering crosscourt backhand with which he sealed the first game, the product of a sudden and violent injection of pace, flew past the older man like a Ferrari overtaking a caravan. Nadal looked shaken.
Yet there is more to Alcaraz than mere power. The imagination, mental toughness and creativity he showed as he set about consolidating the early break offered an indication of what sets him apart. If the double-fault he hit at 30-30 seemed perfectly normal for a player of such relative inexperience, and on a stage of such magnitude, the preternatural composure with which Alcaraz caressed a forehand drop shot to save it was anything but. It is a stroke the young Spaniard executes to perfection, the speed and dexterity with which he shifts the racket head making it hard to read, the net-skimming trajectory he achieves rendering it even tougher to pick up.
A second break point came and went with Alcaraz pulling Nadal from pillar to post along the baseline, while a thunderbolt forehand forced an error on a third. On and on it went, Nadal pressing, making returns, inviting errors, only to be denied by some silken net play from his countryman. And here is another facet of Alcaraz’s brilliance. While Nadal is widely regarded as one of the finest volleyers in the sport, it was not always so. His accomplished transition game and net play are among the many layers he has added to his repertoire over the course of a career defined by incremental improvements. Alcaraz, on the other hand, gives the impression of a player who has arrived on the tour almost fully formed. His approach play and volleying are better than Nadal’s were at the same age, while the feline, muscular movement with which he backs up those skills are so redolent of his compatriot that even Nadal has remarked on the similarity.
“He [makes me] remember a lot of things [I did] when I was a 17- or 18-year-old kid,” said Nadal following his quarter-final win over Nick Kyrgios. “I think he has the passion. He has the talent and the physical component. It’s great.”
After 12 minutes and six deuces, Alcaraz finally held in extraordinary fashion. First he floored Nadal – quite literally – with a scrambling backhand pass that sent him tumbling backwards. While Alcaraz just about stayed upright, Nadal ended up flat on his face, losing his footing as he tried desperately to recover his position. Then Alcaraz wrapped up the game with an athletic overhead. If the opening game was a showcase for the teenager’s power, the second demonstrated his variety and fighting spirit.
These were moments of rare indignity for Nadal and, when he promptly fell 0-30 behind on serve, it looked like a first-set rout might be on the cards. Yet there is one aspect of the veteran’s armoury that Alcaraz cannot match at this stage of his career, and that is depth of experience.
Having initially gone toe-to-toe with his countryman, Nadal began to switch things up. Speed gave way to spin. The teenager found himself shooting from the shoulder rather than the hip. As the velocity of the baseline exchanges slowed, Nadal invited his opponent to generate pace rather than feed off it. Errors began to creep into Alcaraz’s game.
The younger man’s difficulties were compounded by Nadal’s adoption of a more aggressive return position, a move which exposed the limitations of a serve that – though frequently delivered at speeds in excess of 140mph – lacks the variations of spin and placement on which Nadal has thrived.
Alcaraz has plenty of time to refine this chink in his armour. Here, however, it was ruthlessly exploited by Nadal, who reeled off four successive games to alter the trajectory of the match.
Alcaraz, whose return game is already among the best in the business, broke back to level at 4-4. Serving to stay in the set, however, he opened with a double fault and quickly found himself 0-40 down. Alcaraz had recovered from an identical position in his previous service game, and nearly pulled off another improbable comeback, saving four set points before finally slicing wide on a fifth. In a sign of the approaching storm, the game was punctuated by some wild errors from both men, the most notable of which came when a Nadal forehand flew long in the swirling wind.
As the gusts rose, the quality dipped. Yet Alcaraz negotiated the situation with aplomb, fashioning a stunning topspin backhand lob to break in the ninth game following a 20-minute struggle punctuated by seven deuces.
“He has all the shots,” said Nadal, whose steadfast commitment to attack saw him home in the decider despite a pectoral injury that required treatment. “He can play very aggressive. He can play defensive because he’s super fast. He can defend amazing balls. Of course, when he’s playing aggressive, is difficult to stop him because his quality of the ball is very high. I think he has all the ingredients to become an amazing champion, no?
“I treated the match like facing not a young player at all. I didn’t come to the match more nervous because I played a youngster or this stuff, no. I treated [it] like I play against a top-eight player. In terms of level, that was my feeling. I saw him playing during the whole week and I think his level is top, top. I went on court with maximum respect, but at the same time treated him like a top player, tried to fight for every point and find solutions.”
In the first semi-final, Fritz edged past Rublev 7-5, 6-4 to reach the biggest final of his career. The California-born 24-year-old, seeded 20th, is the first American man to reach the final in Indian Wells since John Isner in 2012. The last homegrown men’s champion was Andre Agassi in 2001.