Rafa in Cordoba and Novak in Belgrade

What a difference a couple of days makes!
At the end of their US Open final, Novak Djokovic and Rafael Nadal seemed to be on two distinctly different trajectories.

Novak, though battered by the brutal final and barely able to bend his back to serve it out, seemed ready to begin the last few months of his spectacular season with yet another Davis Cup victory. A victory that could, once again, put him on a path to face (and beat) Rafa one more time this season.

Rafa, battered mentally as much as physically, looked lost. I wondered how he'd be able to glean any positives from this specific loss and, in general, what has been a fine season as long as the opponent on the other side of the net was not named Novak Djokovic!

Both were going to do their best to fulfill their commitments to their team and country by competing in Davis Cup semifinal matches back in Europe... starting a mere 4 days after their brutal final. By the end of Friday's matches, their respective situations couldn't have been more dramatically different.

Rafa was up first in Friday's semifinal match against France's Richard Gasquet. He had arrived in (Cordoba) Spain fatigued, and pretty much at the end of his energy reserves. But a depleted Nadal still turned out to be completely overwhelming for the French team. He lost just 4 games in a first-class beatdown of world number 15 Richard Gasquet. The score was 6-3 6-0 6-1 and yes, the match was just as lopsided as the scoreline appears.

After Friday's embarrassing beatdown of Gasquet, he laid yet another beatdown on France's Jo-Wilfried Tsonga: a 6-0 6-2 6-4 victory in the decisive match. The 6 games that he lost in the match, added to the 4 he lost in his first match, made for a grand (and thoroughly unbelievable) total of 10 games lost over 6 sets of tennis. I had wondered how Rafa would respond to his demoralizing loss in the US Open final. Davis Cup domination was his response.

As captain Guy Forget would say later, it didn't matter if they played Tsonga on Friday or Sunday, they would still need to beat Nadal twice. And he knew that wasn't going to happen easily, if at all, on clay. Forget made this statement about the match-up with Nadal after the match:
"To beat Nadal you have to serve better, be physically stronger ... it takes years of practice, a different way of thinking about the game, putting new schemes in place," Forget said, adding that the differing physical characteristics between Nadal and the French players provided a clear picture. "We're not there," Forget said. "If we want to be competitive with Spain on this surface, there's no other chance but to do that."

Strong words to match a strong performance. 8 unforced errors, and only 6 points allowed against his serve in the match with Tsonga. Was this really the same Rafa we had seen only a week earlier getting dismembered point-by-point by Novak? No it wasn't. It was the Rafa we knew was there all along under the doubts brought on by his losses to Novak. It was the "old" Rafa.

What about Novak? What about the newly-crowned US Open champ? How did he fare during the Davis Cup semis against Argentina? Surprisingly, he didn't fare quite as well (note: understatement alert).

Novak was replaced in Friday's lineup by Viktor Troicki because of his lingering back injury and fatigue. The prevailing thought is that he was hoping to avoid duty during the weekend's semifinals because he just didn't' feel he could put out the effort. The switch was costly. Troicki lost convincingly to David Nalbandian in 4 sets: the beginning of a deep hole the Serbs would dig for themselves against Argentina. A hole that would ultimately end up being way too deep for them to climb out.

The Serbs were hoping against hope that the rest of the team, Troicki, Tipsarevic and Zimonjic, all very strong players, could pull off the win without a depleted Novak. Only after Serbia was on the brink of elimination did they finally call upon him to play; and maybe conjure a little bit more of the Djokovic tennis mastery he had managed the week before to keep them alive for the fifth rubber. It didn't work.

In what would turn out to be the deciding rubber, he lost a tough first set to Juan Martin del Potro in a tiebreak. During changeovers he received treatment more than once from a trainer for his ever-worsening back injury. The stress and fatigue all came to a head when he was down 0-3 in the second set. He fell to the court, crying out in obvious pain, while reaching for a forehand. The Davis Cup was over for the defending champs.

The year's grueling schedule, his grueling pace of winning, and the physical impact of his heavily defensive game on his overly-flexible body all caught up to him. And man was it hard to watch! After several minutes laying on the court, he was helped to his feet and led back to his bench in tears. A hug for Juan Martin del Potro, and consolation on the shoulders of his teammates. Davis Cup had begun his meteoric rise at the end of 2010. We are left hoping that it's not his crippling fall back to Earth as we near the end of 2011.

Novak really wanted this win for his country. However, on the tail end of his historic year it was not a necessity. Rafa, on the other hand, really needed this win. Not just for his country, but for himself. He got it, defying all laws of convention: fatigue, jetlag, burnout, loss of confidence, you name it. And he was devastating in doing so.

The outcome of the year-end Barclays ATP World Tour Finals in London is now not quite as clear as it seemed on that Monday evening in New York as Novak hoisted his third major trophy for the year. Maybe Rafa is prepping for a strong finish to the year. Maybe Novak will come back just as strong after taking some time off to rest and heal. If he and Rafa both play in the Shanghai Masters, we'll get a pretty good preview.