Rafael Nadal: Hard to Have Faith in Rafa After US Open Press Conference Collapse

When athletes cramp up so bad they have to hit the deck, it's hard to watch.

Typically, though, spectators like you and I are forced to come to grips with such sights while said athletes are plying their respective trades. But that wasn't the case with Rafael Nadal over the weekend at the US Open.

As everyone has no doubt heard by now, cramps got to Nadal's left leg during a news conference two hours after his third-round victory over David Nalbandian. Despite the fact the cramps were bad enough to require immediate treatment from trainers, Nadal wrote them off as no big deal.

"It's just something that happens," he said, per ESPN. "It's just unfortunate it happened in front of you all. Every single player in there has had that happen before. Every single one."

Nadal explained that cramps are just plain bound to crop up when a man forces his body to "run miles and miles and miles and miles" on a tennis court, especially if the weather is a little on the warm side.

That was very much the case during Nadal's showdown with Nalbandian on Sunday, and the fact that it was also humid didn't help either. He was dehydrated, and he chalked up the timing of the cramps to the cool atmosphere in which he was conducting his press conference.

So in short, all the signs do indeed point towards Nadal's cramps as being no big deal. That obviously bodes well for him as he prepares to take on Gilles Muller in the US Open's fourth round on Tuesday. So does the weather, which is supposed to be much cooler.

Does this mean none of us should be worried about Nadal? That would be nice, but the truth is that you kind of have to be worried about him at this point. He may insist he is going to be fine, but that's not something that should be taken for granted.

First and foremost, and this is something that I wrote about on Monday, the sheer unpredictability of Nadal's health this year makes it hard to trust that he's going to be 100 percent healthy at any given moment. If it's not cramps, it's a blister. If it's not a blister, it's burned fingers. Nothing major, but certainly things that keep Nadal from being at full health.

To be sure, Nadal is good enough to battle through such physical nuisances. But if they're there, and he starts struggling, one naturally wonders if maybe the slight imperfections in his health have gone to his head.

I may be alone here, but such a thought crossed my mind during Wimbledon earlier this year. Nadal suffered a foot injury during the fourth round but ended up making it to the final anyway. It was there that he lost to Novak Djokovic, and Nadal just didn't look like himself. One way or another, maybe the foot injury had something to do with it.

The chief fear, in so many words, is that these little health problems might snowball and become bigger issues than they should be. With the competition getting stiffer and stiffer at Flushing Meadows, that's really all it's going to take for Nadal to get knocked out.

Short of drinking plenty of fluids and not walking under any ladders, though, there's only so much he can do.