Rafa Jódar stabs himself again and again in front of his bench, arms crossed. Again and again he looks there, seeking help and answers that do not come because it is one of those twisted days when nothing goes right for a tennis player and he ends up falling into despair. He is running himself ragged, but it is of little use. It does not matter how or where he hits. Yunchaokete Bu pilots the match at will on court 17 and keeps taking games until the upset is consummated: there is no remedy, no comeback. Only frustration and more frustration on one side, so the Madrid player falls (6-2, 6-1, and 6-1, in 1h 47m) and says goodbye in the first round of the US Open.
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The defeat is surprising, sounding like a stumble. It would not have been so not long ago, considering the youth of the Madrid player, but now that Jódar (19 years old) has greatly raised the bar by having managed to climb to the noble zone of the circuit, it is. He also came after signing hopeful results in previous tournaments: final in Washington, semifinals in Montreal, and a defeat in the round of 16 in Cincinnati that seemed rather timely, so he would not arrive in New York with an empty tank. Far from showing up with vigor, his landing in the competition was unrecognizable and he faced an opponent with a scary name who acted with maximum determination.
Tennis players immediately detect when the opponent is having an off day. And it was not Jódar’s day, off-key from the start and strangely overwhelmed. Disfigured. This time, neither power nor legs nor heroics. No trace of the insatiable competitor of these months, the boy who more than deservedly — until two days ago was a university student — has earned the respect of the circuit and the praise of the stars. It was not Jódar, or at least it did not seem so. Folded up all the time, his tennis loses the shine it gives off when he takes the initiative. Designed to attack and dominate, the Spaniard suffers if he does not manage to take control of the matches and Bu, a lucky loser who had not yet won any match in a Grand Slam, did what he had to do: go all out. No hesitation.
Such are the mysteries of tennis. A complete unknown knocking down the revelation of the year and another swerve in an edition that in the first round also lost Novak Djokovic. If the defeat against Shintaro Mochizuki at Wimbledon was surprising, this one against Bu, a last-minute substitute in Thanassi Kokkinakis’s draw who had not won any match in the ATP circuit this season, was even more so. Nothing went right for Jódar, whose inaccuracy is reflected in the cold numbers: 31 errors, only 52% of serves in, and a meager 32% of points won on second serves.
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