Wimbledon: Nadal Loses

When it was all over, when he took off his bandana and his long, black hair spilled over his face, when he giggled and blushed over his inadequacies with English, we all suddenly remembered that Rafael Nadal was still a boy after all, and we felt a little guilty for the unreasonableness of our expectations. But that is what tennis does to you.

He may be the champion of France, the owner of improbable muscles and rated the game's next big thing, but Nadal is a 19-year-old learning his trade. Yesterday the fourth seed was given a particularly harsh lesson by the 69th-ranked Gilles Muller, who won this second-round match 6-4, 4-6, 6-3, 6-4. Now it was the blushing turn of those who thought Nadal could emulate the great Bjorn Borg by winning back-to-back titles in Paris and at Wimbledon.

There is a Yellow Pages advertisement in which James Nesbitt turns up for an "elves" fancy-dress party wearing an Elvis costume. Nadal, too, seemed to have got it wrong on Court One yesterday.

With his pantalones, sleeveless shirt and headband he looked like an extra for a pirates film who had turned up on the wrong set, so ill at ease was he throughout his match against the man from Luxembourg.

In a sense he had, for his stage is the red clay of Roland Garros. And, according to Muller, it might always remain so. "I think maybe that Nadal
is never going to win Wimbledon," he said bluntly. "With his game, I mean, he's serving well and fighting unbelievable, but he's not playing serve-and-volley, so I think it's tough for him to win here. And I say that even though the bounce is higher so they [clay-court players] can use their forehand more and it's much easier for them than before."

Nadal retorted that "Wimbledon will be my goal until the day I retire", but it may not happen for him for an aeon or two.

Muller hit the ball consistently well, flat and deep. Nadal's exaggerated top-spin carried the ball higher but he mistimed his strokes and his cumbersome forays to the net were reminiscent of an absent-minded shopper who, when he has finally arrived, has forgotten what he came for; this was serve-folly tennis.

Muller's chances had not looked good. He had been beaten 6-0, 6-2 by Nadal in their only previous meeting on the clay of Barcelona this year. He is making his Wimbledon debut and had never won a match in three previous majors. Last year he lost in the first round of the Wimbledon qualifying event.

But he took the first set in 32 minutes yesterday, breaking in the 10th game. Nadal, so effervescent in his 6-4, 6-3, 6-0 opening-round win over Vince Spadea on Tuesday, was strangely flat.

Empty seats gaped and it seemed that the Spaniard was being drained of energy by Tim Henman's latest high-wire act, for the gasps and groans were drifting over from Centre Court. At one changeover, when Henman's plight rolled up on the scoreboard, there was a shout of "C'mon Tim!" It was all a little surreal.

Then, in the second set, Nadal suddenly became animated. He started flexing his left bicep. He broke in the ninth game and when he held
his serve in the next, winning the game with a finely judged lob, he jumped and punched and kicked all at the same time.

The 6ft 5in Muller, though, looked unshaken. He wrong-footed Nadal yet again in the eighth game of the third set to give himself three break points; the Spaniard immediately served a double fault. Once Nadal had been broken again, in the fifth game of the fourth set, recovery was beyond him.

So what happened, Rafa? "He play very good, no? He play better than me. That's happen." And then he summed it up. "I need to improve some things. I need to improve my serve, my volley and my confidence with the game on grass, no?"

He added that he had played a lot of tennis and that he needed to "disconnect. Disconnect is good?" Well, disconnected summed up his game yesterday.

So the much anticipated third-round meeting between the game's two most exciting teenagers, Nadal and France's Richard Gasquet, is no more.

Out in the country, Court 13 was something of a French quarter yesterday, starting with Gasquet's defeat of the Belgian Gilles Elseneer.

You would have struggled to squeeze a Rizla paper between them in the first three sets before the Frenchman ran away with the fourth 6-2. Then he talked lots about playing Nadal tomorrow.