Imbledon would always be the toughest question for Rafael Nadal in his quest for a clean sheet of Grand Slams in a calendar year.
He passed a second-round test against Ricardas Berankis, world No. 106, and yet things didn’t go as smoothly as would be expected of the winner of the Australian and French Open.
Nadal hadn’t played on grass in three years and sometimes showed it with a lack of fluency. In total, he was broken twice, but his Lithuanian opponent threatened to do it a few more times. He said after the win: “Every day is a challenge. I haven’t played on grass for three years, so every day is an opportunity to improve.
“I have to accept that things aren’t perfect and keep working, be humble and think positively when things don’t go so well to improve in the next shots, games and sets.”
Highlights from day three of Wimbledon
Berankis, who made his Wimbledon showcourt debut, had warned before the match that there were no free points against Nadal and although the Spaniard was not at his best, there were still no freebies for his opponent.
In the end, Nadal won 6-4, 6-4, 4-6, 6-3 and yet his disinterested opponent threatened to break on points.
The pattern of the match was that Berankis faded away at the end of the first two sets, while Nadal returned the favor in the third. When the decider came, Nadal simply turned the screw and raced to a 3-0 lead before the heavens opened and play was suspended with the roof closed.
Center Court had kept the roof open for Katie Boulter’s previous game when it didn’t rain a drop and ironically chose to keep it open for Nadal’s return to Center Court and the eventual downpour.
At the time, there was only one winner as the two-time Wimbledon champion became increasingly clinical.
The 22-time Grand Slam champion only needed one break to take the opening set, but it was Berankis who got the opening break in the second set.
But as that set went on, he couldn’t match Nadal’s intensity and had to endure two more breaks.
He took a break lead in a third set which he largely dominated and looked far from the player who hadn’t played a single match on the grass court in preparation for Wimbledon.
But as is Nadal’s custom, he refused to give in, leaving that third set just a blip.
It is often unclear how much pain Nadal endures in any given match. It was only after his last French Open win that he revealed that his right foot was numb as a result of injections to nullify the foot problem.
He gave little away on the matter on SW19, but took a different approach to his pre-Wimbledon treatment using heat to kill nerve tissue and send pain to his brain.
How well that holds up to keep the Slam calendar alive is another matter, but for now Nadal is in the third round.