“Rosol!” sounds like an insult – but he’s the no-hoper who beat Nadal at Wimbledon

Lukas Rosol

I didn’t even bother setting the recorder for Nadal’s second-round match against 26-year old Czech unknown, Lukas Rosol. After all, the 100^th-ranked tennis player in the world was making his Wimbledon debut having been beaten in the first round of qualifying on five previous attempts to get into the main draw. A peasy three-set Spanish victory beckoned. The only question was whether Rosol would end up with more than six games to his name – a more than acceptable performance against the sport’s bully-in-chief.

I tuned in briefly when I heard that Nadal was two sets to one down – but then the tide turned, and Nadal won the fourth set. The outcome was inevitable – it would be 6-1 to the scowling Spaniard in the decider. I was enjoying watching Italy beat Germany at the Euros, but I flipped over for the start of the fifth set, just to check how quickly Nadal was turning Rosol into a rissole (see what I did there?). Unexpectedly (to put it mildly) the Czech immediately broke Nadal’s serve and then held to lead 2-0. Odder yet, he was playing better than Nadal – not because the world No. 2 was having an off-night: Rosol was simply playing some of the most magnificent balls-out attacking tennis ever witnessed on Centre Court. As John Lloyd commented bemusedly after one particularly ball-tearing forehand, “Did he actually play that shot?”

Nadal won his next service game to love. Normal service resumed. I decided to stick around until Rosol’s own serve was broken – but it never happened. Crashing ace followed scorching forehand winner as Nadal wilted in the face of the sort of relentless, pounding, brutal tennis which has made him the greatest competitor of his generation in any sport.

Not only did Rosol (whose name really does sound like something you’d shout at a driver who’s just cut you up) not wake up in time to realise that, here in the greatest tennis arena in the world, he was crushing the man who had won his seventh French Open title just a few weeks back – he didn’t lose a single point during his last two service games. 

This does not happen. The rule is that decent, low-ranked players are very occasionally allowed to get a set ahead of Nadal, Djokovic or Federer – but that they must then fall to pieces when, within sight of victory, they look across the net, realise who they’re playing, and think “Holy Crap! Who am I kidding?”

Now, I’ll admit I’m not Nadal’s greatest fan. There’s something unpleasantly thuggish about his playing style, and his incomparable competitiveness enables him to punch above his talent level (something I doubt he’d argue with – he knows his limitations). Last night also revealed other aspects of his approach I don’t admire. First, he complained to the umpire about Rosol “dancing” behind the baseline as he prepared to receive Nadal’s serve – well, boo hoo! Then he appeared to deliberately barge into his opponent during a changeover. As Rosol is four inches taller than the Spaniard, and because this was his day, he remained blithely unintimidated. (You can watch both incidents here.) 

During the fifth set, as Rosol became more and more hyper, Nadal tried to slow play down even more than he usually does (almost an impossibility, given the amount of rule-bending eons he routinely takes between points – any slower and they’d have been playing backwards): at one stage he even managed to get a Rosol ace disallowed because he “wasn’t ready”, to which the referee should have responded “Tough titty!” and called the score in the Czech’s favour.

To me, all this amounts to cheating. Djokovich and Federer don’t go in for any of this nonsense: why should Nadal be allowed to get away with it?

I’ll admit I got a bit tearful when, after Rosol had pounded down yet another ace to accomplish one of the greatest grand slam upsets in history, the camera cut to his friends and family in the Players’ box to show his coach looking aghast – almost as if he’d just witnessed a dreadful accident -  and a lady I presumed to be Rosol’s mother in tears.

The atmosphere on Centre Court, which can be electric at the best of times, tends to turn positively nuclear when, as happened during the final set, matches are played under a closed roof. The cheer that greeted Rosol’s victory could probably be heard back in his hometown, Brno. When the winner was interviewed right after the match, he was evidently as astonished as the rest of us. History dictates he will lose in the next round in three swift sets, no matter who he’s playing. I doubt any human being can instantly adjust to “success so huge and wholly farcical”.

For those of us who watched the match (apart from committed Nadal fans) the world will appear a little more special and magical today – a place where, through grace, humdrum ducklings really can turn into glorious swans.

As for Nadal, well, despite his dicey on-court shenanigans, he proved himself to be the sort of truly classy human being we’d like all great sports champions to be. As he left Centre Court in the wake of a shocking humiliation that must have scooped out his insides - he stopped to sign autographs for fans.

As for Nadal’s main rivals, I can picture them all dancing around their TV sets at a few minutes past ten o’clock last night, repeatedly shouting “Yes!” and high-fiving their entourage. 

For the next ten days, I'm hooked.