The rain-drizzled dome on the banks of the Thames has housed a wide range of tennis entertainment this week, from wretched capitulation to a surprise cameo on Thursday by that most dogged of understudies, David Ferrer.
Ferrer, clicking his heels for four days, remembered his lines well enough: fight, fight and fight again – and never celebrate. He has fought some daft lost causes in his time but even the Spaniard with the soaked spaniel demeanour surely saw the pointlessness of hunting down one more teasing Kei Nishikori drop-shot after stepping into the fray for Milos Raonic at the last minute.
Having taken only five games off Roger Federer on Tuesday after a half-decent win over Andy Murray on the opening day, Nishikori did not look the most reliable of conveyances to advance in the 2014 ATP Tour Finals on his tournament debut. This has been an oddly sub-par tournament, with short, sharp matches – the quickest arriving in a pair of 6-1, 6-1 defeats on Monday for Marin Cilic and Tomas Berdych – so it was comforting to see a grinder like Ferrer back in harness.
Nishikori, though, was too good for Ferrer, who filled the void left by the injured Canadian as second alternate, Grigor Dimitrov preferring the sun-blessed holiday company of Maria Sharapova to the November clouds in London. Still, it earned Ferrer $85,000 (£54,000), not bad for just under two hours’ work in what turned out to be the tournament’s first three-setter – after nine sessions, a statistic that suggests either nerves, tiredness or torpor.
Had he won, Ferrer would have pocketed another $155,000. But he did not look in shape to upset the favourites. He admitted to a joint problem and denied rumours that he had a cold, although he had no complaints waiting about all week on the off-chance of a bit of tennis.
Nishikori fashioned what turned out to be an impressive 4-6, 6-4, 6-1 win, looking occasionally awesome towards the end. “The final set [was] almost perfect,” he said later. “I won almost every point when I came to the net.”
He broke Ferrer five times in total and shrugged off 37 unforced errors. “He’s playing with [much] confidence,” said the Spaniard, whose description of his conqueror as “a very great player” might owe more to his halting English than reflect accurately his assessment of him. “He has improved his serve and his fitness. The key this season is his fitness. He has played at a very good level for a long time.”
Nishikori could not have caught Ferrer colder had they dragged the Spanish battler out of the wintry Thames. Raonic revealed he told Ferrer – but not Nishikori, as he could not find him – just before the scheduled start that a torn quad muscle he picked up towards the end of the first set against Murray on Tuesday was too painful to let him continue. “I was a little surprised,” Nishikori said, “because I didn’t know he was injured.”
Sounding more like a surgeon than a tennis player, Raonic said: “We found I have a slight tear on the vastus medialis on my quad. There is a large area of swelling, about five centimetres long, three centimetres wide, and one centimetre deep, of swelling and bleeding.”
He added: “To be honest, it originally felt like cramping. But then I only had more of an idea of what it was when I sat down on the changeover and had to stand up. That’s when I could feel there was something that wasn’t necessarily a cramp.
“As badly as I wanted to play, it’s about being at the top of your game. I couldn’t be close to that today. It would be unfair towards the fans if I was to step out there and either play a mediocre match all the way through or if things got worse and I had to stop.
“I was told that if I was to step out on court I’d be walking a tightrope where I can play obviously not at 100%, but with a significant risk of losing up to six to eight weeks if things go badly. So six to eight weeks of solely rehab means you lose 12 weeks of getting back into shape. Those were significant factors in my decision, [although] I didn’t want to accept it and listen to it.”
A fit Raonic probably would have given Nishikori a tougher time but for an hour at least, Ferrer did his job, taking the first set in his trademark gritty style after 45 minutes and making the Japanese player work to the limit to take the second. However, Ferrer’s resistance crumbled in the third and his final offering, a tired slap long from behind the baseline, was an appropriately downbeat full stop to a so-so match.
