Before today’s match, Rafael Nadal, the No. 2 seed, had never seen his first-round opponent, Alun Jones of Australia, play. In fact, he didn’t even know what he looked like. This isn't because Nadal doesn't pay attention to the other players in the locker room but because Jones is in the locker room so infrequently. Going into today's match, Jones, 27, had only played six tour-level events since 2001.
But Nadal, bothered by ailing knees and perhaps almost as much by Jones's near perfect game plan, was pushed far harder today than anyone expected. The 21-year-old Spaniard, down a break in the fourth set, scrapped and clawed his way to a hard-fought, and apparently painful, four-set win, 7-5, 6-3, 6-4, 6-1.
"Maybe if I am in another tournament, I never go to the court today,'' Nadal said after the match about his knee pain that kept him to just 30 minutes of practice in the last two days. "But this is the US Open. It's very important tournament for me. I have big illusions for playing good at this tournament."
For his part, Jones, 27, who needed a wild-card to get into the tournament and owns just two match victories on the main tour in his entire career, was having the time of his life.
"I had a great time out there,'' Jones said. "First time out there on a big court, pretty much. It was a great experience. Enjoyed every minute of if."
Because of the pain in his knees, Nadal's strategy was to go out and move as little as possible and still win, hoping to protect his knees. This obviously contributed to his struggles today. But it's also true that Nadal, despite the fact that he's won five hard-court tournanemts in his career, has never been as comfortable on the courts of the US Open as he is on the clay of Roland Garros, where he's won the past three years, not to mention the grass courts of Wimbledon, where he's reached the final twice. Here at the Open he owns just an 8-4 record over the past four years. His best showing was a quarterfinal finish last year.
Jones came into the match as just the No. 123 ranked player in the world. The only other time he's played the US Open was in 2003 and 2006, when he lost in the first round of the qualifying. But he executed smart strategies against Nadal, illuminating Nadal's vulnerability on the fast hard courts here. He attacked Nadal's often short-landing shots, pressing the action throughout. In the first two sets he hit 23 winners to Nadal's just eight. But while Jones was having success attacking, he was also feeling the pressure of taking on the No. 2 player in the world on the world's biggest tennis stadium.
"Just the fact that I'm not used to playing the big stage at this level against a guy like that,'' was Jones's honest self-assesment of why he lost. "You know, mentally, I just went up and down a little bit."
The turning point in the match occurred in the third set. After breaking Nadal to go up 4-3, Jones played an extremely tight game, making two glaring unforced errors to lose his serve and give the break back to Nadal. From 4-4 in the third Nadal never looked back, winning eight of the last nine games of the match.
"I had chances in the third set to go up two sets to one,'' said Jones. "Had a break. I just gave it back on an easy game."
Nadal moves on to the second round where he will take on Janko Tiparevic of Serbia.
"I have a problem in the knee,'' he said with a bit of resignation in his voice. "So, if I have to go out, I have to go out. But I am playing more aggressive this year than last year, and I have to continue playing like this, because this year I am playing well."
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