By Giri Nathan
Spaniards have continued a centuries-old tradition of conquering the Californian desert. Thursday was a back-to-back-to-back showcase. First up in the afternoon was Paula Badosa. The 24-year-old’s current form and ridiculously fast ascent can both be summed up by these facts: She has yet to lose a set at this tournament, and, as the defending champ, has yet to lose a main-draw match in Indian Wells in her life. She’s now 10–0 here. Life at the top of the WTA is still pretty fresh for Badosa, who started last season as the world No. 70, only to steamroll that clay season, pick up a habit of dispatching top 5 players, and eventually enter the top 5 herself last month. She’s been one of the most consistent performers on tour, and a hypnotic watch as destructive power melds with smooth movement. While clay remains her home, Badosa has found her range on slower hard courts, and her quarterfinal win over Veronika Kudermetova extends her bid to become the first back-to-back Indian Wells winner since Martina Navratilova did it in ’90 and ’91.
Spaniards have continued a centuries-old tradition of conquering the Californian desert. Thursday was a back-to-back-to-back showcase. First up in the afternoon was Paula Badosa. The 24-year-old’s current form and ridiculously fast ascent can both be summed up by these facts: She has yet to lose a set at this tournament, and, as the defending champ, has yet to lose a main-draw match in Indian Wells in her life. She’s now 10–0 here. Life at the top of the WTA is still pretty fresh for Badosa, who started last season as the world No. 70, only to steamroll that clay season, pick up a habit of dispatching top 5 players, and eventually enter the top 5 herself last month. She’s been one of the most consistent performers on tour, and a hypnotic watch as destructive power melds with smooth movement. While clay remains her home, Badosa has found her range on slower hard courts, and her quarterfinal win over Veronika Kudermetova extends her bid to become the first back-to-back Indian Wells winner since Martina Navratilova did it in ’90 and ’91.
Next on court was Rafa. For the record: Rafa is tired of talking about his foot. “If it’s okay for you guys, I gonna say it for the last time,” he told reporters last week at Indian Wells. “The foot is not going to be 100 percent recovered—never. Because I have an injury on the foot that I can’t fix. That’s the truth,” he said. That chronic pain came close to shutting down his career last year, he’s since explained, and he returned to the court in 2022 with gratitude to be playing at all. Three months into the season, we’re still talking about his foot…because it is the only thing capable of slowing him down as he chews through the rest of the tour. He’s 19–0 to start the season, with three titles to show for it.
Rafa’s Indian Wells campaign has not been without its hiccups and philosophical interludes. Seb Korda, the young American who named his cat after the Spaniard, was a tricky second-round out. The 21-year-old American secured a 5–2 lead in the decider, before Nadal wrenched back the momentum. Afterward, when asked if he draws on his past accomplishments to get confidence, he dispensed a classic nugget of Rafaism, worth reading in its entirety:
I don’t know. The only thing I can tell you is, if the people believe that I am a believer all the time that I going to come back, not true. I am not this. I don’t have this amazing self-confidence that even if I am 5–2, okay, I going to come back. No.
But in my mind is, okay, is almost impossible. I don’t want to give up. I going to keep trying. But I know it’s going to be almost impossible. Let’s try to let him win, not help him to win. Just try to keep going and to put the things a little bit more difficult to the opponent.
Normal thing with this kind of match, in that position from 100 matches, probably you going to lose 90. But if you give up, you’re going to lose 100. If you are there, you can win 10 percent.
One of these days I’ll walk up to a cash register and be ambushed by a small volume called The Collected Wisdom of Rafa, and I will be happily separated from my $17.99. Until then, I’ll watch him continue to fight through the pain and kick ass. Nadal was glancing down at that foot early in the tournament, and by the time he beat Reilly Opelka in two tiebreaks in the fourth round, he was limping between points. But even with that pain and some subpar serving on Thursday, he still survived the most focused and fit Nick Kyrgios we’ve seen in a while. Rafa’s only problem right now is that he’s playing too well to get himself any rest.
Whenever Nadal does hang it up for good, Spanish men’s tennis will transition seamlessly to its next sometimes-sleeveless world-beater. Mention of Carlos Alcaraz in these newsletters so far has been conspicuously scarce. This isn’t for lack of excitement and attention. I’ve just been keeping it to myself. Partly it’s because I’ve been burned by too many hype cycles. Partly it’s because I am frightened by his results. It was quaint to watch little 16-year-old Carlos get his first ATP win at Rio back in 2020. I enjoyed that. This year, though, Alcaraz won the whole title in Rio, becoming the youngest player ever to win an ATP 500, and the youngest player to rank inside the top 20 since 1993. This week in the desert, the 18-year-old has stared down veterans like his sturdy countryman Roberto Bautista Agut or an in-form Gael Monfils and simply erased them, delivering bagels and breadsticks without mercy. It’s scary. I don’t get the attempts to make sense of him as some chimeric mash-up of the Big Three—for my money, no other player I’ve ever seen calls to mind his blend of balance, speed, and pace—but I am now ready to appreciate him on his own terms. On Thursday, Alcaraz took out defending champ Cam Norrie, who was himself on a tear, to improve to 12–1 on the season and take on Nadal in the semifinal. Time to cast old caution aside: This kid is going to win this title, and all the other titles, so many times.
Above: The defending champ moves onto the semis. (Getty)
