Your Call 7.16

By Pete Bodo

Mornin', everyone. This will be the Your Call post for today.

The languid summer (if officially begins the day after Wimbledon ends, IMO) is well upon us, and it's time to think long-term, which for me these days means thinking about Rafael Nadal. I'm sure you all saw that he starts practicing Monday, and is entered in Montreal. The unexpected turn of events wrought by the last few months - Robin Soderling as a stand-in for Rafa in the Roland Garros final, Roger Federer's epic, record-shattering performance at Wimbledon, and recapture of the no. 1 ranking - all of them come together to create a tsunami of tantalizing questions that won't entirely be answered until the last ball is hit in the men's singles final of the U.S. Open.

I can't remember a recent summer in which so many issues are on the table. Those issues could be resolved cleanly (if Federer dominates the summer tour, for it would clearly re-affirm his superiority, and make all of his rivals seem like X-number of guerrilla fighters, winning small battles and inflicting small hurts while steadily losing the larger war). But if Roger doesn't take control, various scenarios could re-shape the face of tennis for the year 2010. If I were the mysterious monsieur Paganini (the trainer, not the violinist) or baby-faced Severin Luthi, the war games I'd run would feature Federer antagonists like Nadal, Andy Murray, Novak Djokovic, Andy Roddick - perhaps even a wild-card or two, like Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, Juan Martin del Potro (remember how he lit it up last summer?), even the long-denied Tommy Haas.

Of course, the greatest danger to Federer will be posed by Nadal. For the first time in his career, Rafa will be rolling into the hard-court season not just as fresh but fresher than any of his major rivals. Last year at this time, it was all about Federer; Nadal had yet to win his first hard-court major, and Murray was just beginning his final ascent to the top of the game. The resounding question - can anyone beat a seemingly vulnerable Roger Federer? - has changed to become, can Nadal re-group and re-assert his role as Federer's nemesis?

This year, nobody can point to the  heavy lifting Nadal did in the spring and early summer as a legitimate excuse for a slight drop in his enthusiasm in the summer. As Federer's magical mystery tour through the halls of tennis history has shown, there's always a new circumstance or unexpected roadblock thrown in the way of greatness.

Nadal is at one of those five or six career junctures that any top player comes across - if he's lucky enough to stay in the hunt for the top ranking. A curtain fell on another act of Nadal's career that overcast day in Paris when he became a loser at Roland Garros, while holding the Australian Open title. The issue for the next act is clear: can Rafa prove himself - for the first time - to be as lethal a force in the last five months of the year as he is in the first seven?

This raises some interesting technical issues having to do with the quality of Nadal's hard-court game (those, of course, were mostly answered last February), and the incremental progress made by his less successful but equally driven and amply talented rivals. But the more important challenges for Nadal will be mental and emotional. For as deferential as he's been to Federer all this time, don't you get the wee bit of a feeling that at some point as that Wimbledon final un-spooled, Nadal had to look at Federer and ask himself: When is this guy going to let go or slip up, thinking, enough is enough, I've got nothing to prove. . .

One of Federer's great secrets is that down deep he probably doesn't feel he has anything to prove, because he takes quite enough satisfaction out of just playing the game - seeing in just what new way he can make the ball talk, or indulging in the guilty pleasure of basking in the glory that's been showered on him in a way that his own sensibility may find hard to fathom, and which he articulates in a self-wondering way that is easily mistaken for arrogance. Oh, we know all about how hard Federer works, and how fully he embraces the requisite sacrifices every top player must make - those are givens (does he, after all, really work "harder" than snakebit Tommy Haas? Beleaguered Djokovic? Fate-hammered Andy Roddick or even a struggling no. 25?). We are still entitled to ask, has anyone been as utterly blessed as Roger Federer?

Federer's innate understanding that maybe it oughtn't to be as easy as it looks, but somehow is, provides him with a formidable release from pressure, aided now by his having become the all-time singles Grand Slam champion. It would be legitimate to ask, "Where does he now turn for motivation?" But the question is bogus, for a reason Rod Laver  articulated in one of the few genuine Yoda moments in recent memory*: He loves to play this game*. Feel that love, feed it and keep it from being corrupted by any of the irritants that accompany enormous success, and you've got a weapon superior to any thundering serve or whiplash backhand.

Nadal loves to play this game, too. And he has a notable fondness for the acrid smell of burned gunpowder that dominates a field of  battle. But can he slough off the disappointments of June and July, and bring his customary ferocity and mettle to the next stage of his career?

How will the young man who's had a brief glimpse of life as the hunted take to being forced back into that familiar and perhaps played-out role of the hunter? As grand a few months as Federer has had, in some ways it has also set up Nadal for a resounding statement. If this were indeed a play, this could be the pivotal moment when the tables are turned and we discover that the actors whom we thought were one thing turn out to be quite another, and the play begins to take twists and turns. As in the best of art, a twist in the plot ought to simultaneously surprise - and make us smack our foreheads in a Why didn't I see that coming! moment.

I can hardly wait.