Rafael Nadal and His Noteworthy Ways: A Critic's Critique

A heart drowning in disappointment—a disappointment many tennis players have felt after playing the beast himself, Rafael Nadal.  

It is not a disappointment many should feel when playing the humble, honest and modest Nadal. But it is a feeling many do feel when victory is grasped, only to hear an excuse, a rebuttal or a display of poor sportsmanship.

Robin Soderling, Juan del Potro, Andy Murray and Nikolay Davydenko can surely attest to this. What is more below the belt than a Nadal excuse for a loss, fair and square?  

Contradictions like these are not elephants in the room; they are houses in a room—something greater than what is deemed to be true, a mythos out of the mold.

What is more, Nadal's contradictions are so obvious that the media, except a scant few editorials, ignore them altogether. Nothing is more disappointing—except seeing a certain Swiss lose—than knowing that Nadal's facade has so long been unnoticed that it has continued to deceive.

Nadal has also suggested, according to him, a solution to injuries and stress: to change the end-of-year rankings to the end-of-two-years rankings. Nothing is more contradictory than claiming the No. 1 status is of almost no value, only to propose an idea that will benefit—what else?—his not-so-tight grasp on the ranking.

Nadal is walking on quicksand; one more mistake or misstep, and he will drown with his two elephants. This fiasco that has been swept under the rug for so long that it is no longer so out in the open. This Beast of Clay will soon slip on the dirt, a so-called king meeting his demise—his own self.