The 14th Brumaire of Rafael Nadal
A guest essay by Club Leftist Tennis comrade Billy Lennon
First as tragedy, then as farce, so the saying goes. But when the farce repeats itself 12 more times, it becomes a material fact of history. Rafael Nadal continues to cement himself as the dictator of red clay, winning his 14th French Open title with his victory over the Norweigan Casper Ruud. Napoleon would be proud. How have we come to this point?
When beginning a material analysis of history, we must first look down at our feet rather than up to the clouds. Nadal has been able to cement his status as the player with the most major titles by dominating the red clay. While all-around players like Roger Federer and Novak Djokovic have a healthy mix of major titles across Europe, the Americas, and Eurasia, on many different terrains, well over half of Nadal’s titles have come on the red clay. It goes to show that in the battle of empires, having strong land (grass court), sea (red clay), and air (grass) forces can only get you so far; Nadal, by taking full control of the seas much like the Spanish Empire with their armadas (wicked left forehand and insane court movement), has been able to limit his battles on other terrains and gain world tennis dominance. Unlike the Roman empire, which overstretched itself, leading to its collapse, Nadal has held down the territory that he has and gained control without expending too many resources, choosing longevity over a desire to directly colonize (a left-handed leftist?) and conquer courts both hard and grass. He has titles on both terrains, but only battles there when totally necessary (dispel questions of him being a one-dimensional), if only to remind people that while he doesn’t need to be present to project his power, he can come lay down the hammer when need be.
Nadal was raised on the seas (red clay), forged by it. Growing up on the island of Mallorca, red clay tennis courts were as natural to him as the grass underneath one’s feet on a warm summer’s day in the park. In other countries, red clay courts are less common, and in many cases, are only reserved to be played on by racqueteers of the bourgeoisie. In Mallorca, the red clay is accessible to the proletariat. The red clay is a public good, like parks or water fountains. Nadal’s opponents, from Switzerland to Japan, have little chance at victory when the dictator Nadal has already put in thousands of hours of work on red clay before they have even stepped on the surface for the first time. In the 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, Marx wanted to “demonstrate how the class struggle in France created circumstances and relationships that made it possible for a grotesque mediocrity to play a hero's part.” While Nadal is in no mediocrity, we can’t look over the fact that the lack of global emphasis on red clay court training have provided a situation that made it much easier for Nadal to seize power. Nadal is riding jet skis for fun, keeping an air carrier sized yacht for a house while the rest of the world seems like they’ve only just discovered the concept of flotation, building speculative boats out of wood.
But we can’t begrudge Nadal for such succeeding in circumstances favorable to him; he did not choose this milieu. “Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past,” writes Marx. To this we also must add that Nadal has, indeed, created the conditions for his own demise: while he has dominated the clay for two decades now, he has set a new standard, defining a new form of warfare on an already existing but sparsely mastered terrain. The rest of the world will catch up to him and seize control of the clay. Maybe not while he is still active. Power will be horizontally shared when he retires, and there may be a period of peace and equally distributed prosperity in the tennis world. But the memory of Nadal, a phantom past that continues to hauntologically inhabit and work on the present, a world-historical figure whose past deeds inscribe the shape of the future we must collectively learn to live in, will tempt a few to repeat the sins of the father and attempt to dominate the world from the red clay once again. This is the dark underbelly of “The Alcaraz Question” that I tremble at; we didn’t think that things could get more intense after Lenin, but then came Stalin.
Napoleon’s coup was in 1851. We continue to live in Nadal’s decades-long coup, a seemingly eternal present in which the world’s been turned upside down, material contradictions remain unresolved, and ghosts are more alive than flesh and blood. Nadal, with a bloody left-fist, continues his rule, a rule we can’t necessarily begrudge because all of his skills came through the utilization of public resources. It should make us shudder that such a monster could come from such humble, organic origins. We are all monsters in potentio. It is our job, as tennis players, to fight everyday for our humanity, but as long as Nadal continues to reign, our monstrosity is reflected back at us, paralyzing us from marching forward into a more prosperous future, where the seas, from Eurasia to America, are shared. The people are down two sets to love, and the only way for us to win is to learn how to swim (play on red clay), and fast.
Billy Lennon is a leftist tennis player hailing from Northeast Ohio. He was the number one ranked player on tennisrecruiting.net when he was 11.