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Heartbreak for Vasek Pospisil and Daniel Nestor, but there is a (bronze) lining in Rio
RIO DE JANEIRO – On the silver-lining side, Vasek Pospisil and Daniel Nestor will play for the bronze medal in men’s doubles Friday.
But it was so very close to being a match for the gold, and a set of unlucky circumstances combined with some heartfelt play by Rafael Nadal and partner Marc Lopez conspired against them in a 7-6 (1), 7-6 (4) semi-final defeat that stings.
“They’re a tough team. They made a lot of extra balls and a lot of those long rallies, and they didn’t give us anything. That was probably the difference; we made a couple more unforced errors than they did,” said Nestor, still steaming after what he considered a disgraceful effort by experienced chair umpire Emmanuel Joseph. “It was a great match. We fought really hard and they fought hard and the crowd was great, and they deserved to win.”
Given it was a match with medal implications, it certainly deserved to be on one of the three show courts equipped with the instant-replay technology. But the total washout on play on Wednesday meant that the singles schedule filled up those courts, and there wasn’t a night session scheduled.
So Nadal – a rock star in South America – Lopez and the two Canadians ended up on Court 3, a small field court that doesn’t have the technology.
Nadal was not happy about this – he’s been unhappy with a few things this week, something easily ascribed to nerves in coming back in an Olympic contest after a 2 1/2-month layoff because of his injured left wrist.
In the end, though, it probably helped him.
“I’ve played for a long time and I haven’t seen calls missed that badly. The first one, in the first set, was a very important point; if we go up 4-1 and consolidate that break, we’ve got a lot of momentum considering we’re creating opportunities on their serve a lot,” Nestor said. “But they fought hard.”
[PHOTOS: Problems at the Rio Games continue]
Nestor and Pospisil had already saved one break point on Pospisil’s serve when the call, made on the baseline, was allowed to stand by Joseph in favour of the Spaniards. That led to another break point; a huge forehand from Lopez allowed the Spaniards to break back and had Pospisil talking to himself.
The second one wasn’t as crucial, but it definitely had Nestor losing his composure. As rare as this is for the 43-year-old veteran, you know that either he was dead in the right or the whole thing just meant a lot to him. Perhaps both.
Nestor took a big, huge cut on a forehand volley in the 5-6 game in the second set and from the looks of the swing, it appeared he might have missed it. But Nestor was convinced it was good, and even appealed to his opponents.
“I don’t even want the point. Just tell me it was in,” he said to them, as Lopez smirked and batted a forehand back over to the Canadians’ side of the court.
“I cannot see (it) from my side,” Nadal said – actually, it seemed somewhat sincere.
Still, it wasn’t the Spaniards’ call; it was Joseph’s purview to overrule and perhaps he hesitated because the more well-known umpires are so used to doing their work on Hawkeye courts these days, they’ve all but put away the overrule instinct.
“It was ridiculous, a disgrace. Do me a favour, come back to me tomorrow and tell me what you think about the calls you missed. That’s all. Everyone makes mistakes, but that badly? I don’t know,” Nestor said afterwards.
Nestor and Pospisil managed to squeeze out of that game and take it to another tiebreak. They even managed to overcome an early mini-break created by Nestor’s double fault.
But then it got dire. Pospisil shanked a forehand at 2-2. Then Nestor told Pospisil to let a ball go during the next point, which Pospisil ended up swinging at – and hitting Nestor right in the back.
Then Pospisil double-faulted; the 2-5 deficit with Lopez serving was too much to overcome.
Nestor to Joseph: “I’ll shake your hand, but you’re a disgrace.”
Rough.
But there was so much at stake.
“I don’t think we played our best – I didn’t play my best. They just played the bigger points better. That was what made the difference,” a disconsolate Pospisil said. “I think the conditions were tough for us. It was tough to volley in wind like this and that definitely didn’t help our cause, especially because it was a little bit of an equalizer in terms of the strategy we had against guys that don’t serve very big. So it was a bit tougher to execute.”
Nadal and Lopez celebrated as if they had just won the gold medal as Nadal went to lie on top of his lifelong friend in an on-court embrace that harkened back to the one Roger Federer and Stan Wawrinka of Switzerland enjoyed when they won the doubles gold medal in Beijing in 2008.
It wasn’t gold. But it was at least silver (and might indeed be gold) and given Nadal has said he probably wouldn’t even be here if it weren’t the Olympics, it was a joyous moment.
For Nestor and Pospisil, there are no worries about being ready to go Friday afternoon for the bronze. They will play Americans Steve Johnson and Jack Sock, who partnered with Pospisil for many years and helped him win the Wimbledon doubles title in 2014.
“I came here because I thought we had a chance to win a medal, otherwise I wouldn’t have come. Now we have that chance,” Nestor said. “So we had two chances, hopefully we’ll get the second one, and we’ll fight hard. It’s going to be a tough match.”
Nadal and Lopez will play the Romanian team of Horia and Tecau.
It’s worth noting that Nestor, playing with Frenchman Edouard Roger-Vasselin, beat that pair in straight sets two weeks ago in the semi-finals of the Washington, D.C. ATP Tour event.
So close.
