OK, let's forget about Rafael Nadal and this nagging sense that he hasn't been quite the same player since he jettisoned the sleeveless shirts and pirata pants. That he's not superstitious we already know, after all: He recently cut off a lot of that long hair that once showered the court with beads of perspiration that flew like diamonds. For a long time, the guy could do no wrong.
But in Shanghai on Sunday (or whenever it was; if you ever figure out the time zones, send a memo), Nikolay Davydenko was the player with the Midas touch. And what we wouldn't give to see our old friend, aka Kolya the Obscure, showing off his guns and sporting fashionably long shorts.
Never happen, of course, because that would be a very un-Kolya thing to do. Davydenko not only looks like he wouldn't say "boo" to a ghost, he has made a career of flying beneath the radar. If you're a tournament promoter facing the tricky situation of having to move a quarterfinal match off a show court, no problem -- send Davydenko out to Court 23 and just hope the guy he's playing won't object, because you know Kolya won't.
Got a semifinal that you have to get in but must start at 9 a.m., before anyone who doesn't actually work at the tournament has arrived? Kolya's your man. Need to throw someone to the lions, to keep all the starstruck Roger Federer and Andy Roddick and Nadal fans happy? Call in Davydenko.
For most of his career Davydenko has been a heavy bag for the top players, even though he technically is one of them. But things have changed a bit over the past two years. This is a guy who has won three Masters 1000 titles, and the last two have no asterisks. He earned his first Masters 1000 title in Paris in 2006, beating Dominik Hrbaty in the final. In Miami in 2008, he beat Roddick (who had taken out Federer) and then shocked Nadal, who was on the verge of winning a Channel Slam -- taking the Roland Garros and Wimbledon titles just months later.
This week, Davydenko's final two victims were Novak Djokovic and a resurgent Nadal. Say what you will about Davydenko: He looks more like the postman in a small Russian village, the one the dog invariably bites, than a pro tennis player. He has shown a tendency to come up small, a victim of his own anxieties, on Grand Slam stages. You could make the case that Davydenko is the Woody Allen of pro tennis, and that's somewhat accurate. Both of them are enormously successful, even if that doesn't seem to be the most significant thing about them.
Just listen to how Davydenko described his own good fortune in the course of his postmatch presser: "On the final day, last match, you want to give everything in this match, 100 percent what you can do. And really, I lost five finals, and I won 17. That was my 18th ATP World Tour title. Now it's really amazing. Really, in finals I play very well."
You could be forgiven for thinking Kolya was trying to justify himself -- that he was reacting to the real or imagined question people have asked on a few other occasions: "He won? Davydenko?"
That's all right. Let the man blow his own horn a little, because the one thing we know for sure is that no one else will. Like Woody Allen, he's accustomed to starring in his own movies.
Peter Bodo has been covering tennis for more than 30 years, most of them with TENNIS.com and TENNIS Magazine, where he is a senior editor and author of the popular blog, Peter Bodo's TennisWorld. A two-time WTA writer of the year, Bodo has also written numerous books, including "Tennis For Dummies" with U.S. Davis Cup captain Patrick McEnroe.
Peter Bodo
