Rafael Nadal went into his last-16 meeting with Denis Shapovalov at the Italian Open unbeaten at that stage of the tournament in 16 previous appearances. Two hours and 37 minutes later, the 10-time champion emerged limping and disconsolate, defeated 1-6, 7-5, 6-2 after the latest painful flare-up of a career-threatening foot injury.
With the French Open due to start a week on Monday, the loss marks another significant setback for Nadal, who has only just returned from a six-week layoff after fracturing a rib in Indian Wells. The Spaniard, who was beaten by teenage compatriot Carlos Alcaraz in the quarter-finals of last week’s Madrid Open, had been desperate to reacquire the rhythm of regular match play. Now he will travel to Paris with just five competitive outings on clay under his belt, short of form and fitness, and facing renewed uncertainty over whether the damaged bone in his left foot, which forced him to miss the second half of last season, will withstand the rigours of five-set competition.
“I am not injured, I am a player living with an injury,” said Nadal, who had not lost in the last 16 of a Masters event since Shapovalov beat him five years ago in Montreal. “That’s it. It’s nothing new. It’s something that is there.
“Unfortunately, my day-by-day is difficult. Even like this, I am trying hard. Of course, it’s difficult for me to accept the situation sometimes. It can be frustrating that, [on] a lot of days, I can’t practice the proper way. Today, half [way through] the second set, starts the thing – then [it] wasn’t playable for me.”
The closing stages made for painful viewing, with Nadal repeatedly wincing and gesturing to his box. After one particularly testing baseline exchange left him hobbling, he leaned over a courtside chair, staring down intently for interminable seconds. He looked for all the world as though he was contemplating his tennis mortality, a scenario that looked a long way off when he began the season with a 20-match unbeaten streak that included a record 21st grand slam title at January’s Australian Open.
“I imagine there will come a time when my head will say, ‘Enough,’” Nadal, the third seed, later told reporters in Spanish. “Pain takes away your happiness, not only in tennis but in life. And my problem is that many days I live with too much pain.”
It will come as scant consolation to Nadal that, but for a pivotal hold by Shapovalov at the start of the second set, he might have reached the sanctuary of the locker room before the problem took hold. With the Canadian world No 16 struggling to find rhythm and consistency, Nadal swept through the opener before spearing a backhand pass to bring up an early break point. It was at this stage that Shapovalov, searching for solutions, adopted a wider serving position, swinging his southpaw serve wide to the Nadal forehand and charging into the net.
It was not the most penetrating of deliveries and, as the ball hung in the night air with a yawning gap beckoning down the line, only one outcome seemed likely. But what Shapovalov’s serve lacked in weight, it made up for in breadth. The confines of the Foro Italico’s Court Centrale are unusually narrow and, as Nadal moved to his left, he ran out of space, sending his return into the net and scraping his elbow against a courtside flower box.
It seemed an innocuous moment at the time, a fleeting blip in a match otherwise dominated by the Majorcan. But when Shapovalov went on to save a second break point with an ace, and a third with a mishit forehand that drew a rueful smile from Nadal, it began to acquire retrospective significance. Shapovalov completed a battling 11-minute hold, Nadal made four unforced errors to drop serve for the first time, and the momentum shifted abruptly towards the Canadian. Nadal had won just four out of the previous 17 points by the time he finally steadied the ship to get on the second-set scoreboard at 1-3, and although Shapovalov gifted him a break back in an error-strewn seventh game, the defending champion continued to look unexpectedly vulnerable.
“He was outplaying me in the first set,” said Shapovalov, for whom the win offered a measure of payback following narrow defeats to Nadal in Rome last year, when he twice held match point, and in the quarter-finals at Melbourne Park.
“Especially the first set, beginning of the second set, he was just dominating me, playing super solid. I didn’t change much. I just tried to hang in there. I kind of freed up after I won the service game, the first service game, in the second set. I was able to free up and play loosely from then on, elevated my game a little bit. He threw in a couple mistakes.”
The timing of Nadal’s errors proved particularly costly. He flirted with danger in the eighth game, fending off break points with an uncharacteristically tentative approach to the net and a brilliant second serve into the body, and again looked nervous as he rallied to see off a set point in the 10th game. That proved the prelude to a more alarming display of anxiety as he served to stay in the set for a second time at 5-6. The second of two double faults handed Shapovalov another chance to level the match, and this time a Nadal backhand flew long. The 23-year-old was on his way.
“Today is tough for me,” said Nadal, who reserved generous praise for Shapovalov’s performance. “I started the season great, then the rib happened. Since I came back, the foot has been tough, being honest. It’s tough for me to be able to practice the proper way [for several] days in a row.
“During the French Open, Roland Garros, I am going to have my doctor there with me. That sometime helps, because you can do things. But I don’t know. I am just sad, obviously, today. As everybody knows, it is a tournament that I like a lot. To be out is something that I don’t like.”