Rise of the Machine: Rafael Nadal's Back to Being a Fighter at U.S. Open

There is the fight. Then there are the skills.

One is a matter of commitment, a matter of consistency and a matter of definition of oneself. The other is a matter of pleasure, a matter of art and a matter of superiority.

The superior gets enjoyment, while the fighter finds it a necessity. The superior is a master of his art, while the fighter is condemned by way of his unchangeable mental make-up to trudge along the painful way.

It is red wine to the superior, that which he is the most skillful practitioner of, while it is daily bread for the fighter, what earns him the right to say that he is himself, that without which he loses his identity, his soul.

There is Rafael Nadal. And then there is the fight.

The tennis court becomes the Colosseum. Everything gets a definition. The vision becomes clearer. The mission, more direct.

It is like the Quest World, the Matrix. Perhaps the world gets Laplace-transformed. Even the exponential converges here. Impossibility loses it's meaning. Impossible is nothing. Singularities disappear.

The player becomes the fighter. The fight becomes isomorphic with survival.

Survival becomes simplistic - a syllogism. The oversimplification makes the attitude that of an animal. It is a beast in the body of a human.

The beast is not a manifestation of brute force. It is an optimization of a physical form towards a particular task and it's faculties know nothing else but that task.

It knows not what fright is. It knows not what flight is. It knows only to fight.

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The muscle mass has reduced, people say. The running is not as fast, they allege. The power has reduced, they shout.

But they dare not say, "the hunger is not there." They dare not say, "the commitment is absent." They dare not say, "he will give up."

For they know that to say it is to blaspheme.

The fight sustains him, and he continues to fight. One feeds the other. It is a perpetual process.

The mental replenishment is slowly nourishing the bio-mechanics. The forehand is dropping faster, and ripping off the ground higher. The backhand is increasingly being used to pull the trigger. The legs are coming out of their inactivity. The net-rushers are increasingly being stranded in no-man's land. The errors are reducing.

But most importantly, the fighting has become more important than the winning once again.

He may or may not win. But results are secondary here.

The important thing is that we again have before us the man in complete concordance with the concept that defines him.

Yes, this is The Return of The Nadalian.

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"VAMOS!"