Culture
Nadal's focused on clay – and other things we learned from the first Australian Open warm-up week
For months, Rafael Nadal has been trying to temper expectations for his comeback, telling the world that he had little sense of whether he would ever return to his championship form or anything approaching it.
On Sunday, Nadal showed the world why he was so cautious. At 37 years old, he knows how brittle he is and after suffering a slight tear in his muscle at a tuneup tournament in Brisbane, Nadal announced on his social media channels that he was pulling out of the Australian Open.
“Hi all, during my last match in Brisbane I had a small problem on a muscle that as you know made me worried,” Nadal wrote on X, formerly Twitter. “Once I got to Melbourne I have had the chance to make an MRI and I have micro tear on a muscle, not in the same part where I had the injury and that’s good news. Right now I am not ready to compete at the maximum level of exigence in five-set matches. I’m flying back to Spain to see my doctor, get some treatment and rest.”
What Nadal hinted at during his few exchanges with the media in Australia and what became crystal clear Sunday is that achieving great results in these first weeks of the season, on hard courts and after being away from the game for nearly a year, was never the priority. Nadal has won the French Open 14 times. He is known as the “King of Clay”. Tennis does not start happening on the red clay he excels on until April. He is intensely focused on being in top form then, not now, and for Roland Garros, which begins in late May, and likely for the Olympics, which will take place at Roland Garros in late July.
“I have worked very hard during the year for this comeback and as I always mentioned my goal is to be at my best level in three months,” Nadal wrote on Sunday. “Within the sad news for me for not being able to play in front of the amazing Melbourne crowds, this is not very bad news and we all remain positive with the evolution for the season. I really wanted to play here in Australia and I have had the chance to play a few matches that made me very happy and positive.”
Whether Nadal’s hip, knees, or chronically injured foot allow him to play is anyone’s guess. Modern tennis, especially the brutally physical brand of it that Nadal plays, is not kind to the ageing athlete. Ask Roger Federer and Andy Murray, or Novak Djokovic, who dedicates so many waking hours to maintaining his health and is battling a niggle in his wrist right now.
But Nadal showed in his three matches in Brisbane that he still knows how to play tennis. Say what you want about his opponents — a faded Dominic Thiem and two middling Aussies, Jason Kubler and Jordan Thompson – there were moments when Nadal looked as slick as ever, especially when he sprinted after drop-shots from deep in the court and pulled off those running, angled flicks that only seem to come out of his hands.
(Patrick Hamilton/AFP via Getty Images)
He also lost three match points to Thompson in the second set and had to receive medical attention for discomfort near the hip that doctors surgically repaired last year. After losing the match, Nadal signalled that playing in the year’s first Grand Slam would depend on how he felt the next morning and in the ensuing days. “After a year it is difficult for the body to be playing tournaments at the highest level.”
There’s a glass-half-full view of all this. Had Nadal won those match points, he might have been tempted to play in the semifinal on Saturday and possibly a final on Sunday, risking a more serious injury. He got in three matches and reminded himself that he can play sublime tennis against solid competition, at least for a few sets. Now comes some rest and recovery.
Whatever happens next in terms of his playing schedule, there is now zero doubt where his focus lies — the red clay of Monte Carlo, Barcelona, Madrid, Rome and Paris.
What else?
It’s just the opening week of the season, so these tournaments mean nothing.
One of the biggest tournaments of the year, the Australian Open, is just days away, so players have to be in form right now.
Only in tennis could both of those statements be true.
After the briefest of “off-seasons”, the Australian Open starts Sunday, January 14, which means hundreds of players were doing what they could during the first days of the year (and the last days of 2023) to prepare.
Results from the tuneup weeks come with the stock-picker’s warning — past performance is not an indicator of future success. Some top players didn’t compete at all.
That said, we were watching what was happening in Australia, New Zealand and even Hong Kong. Here are some things that caught our eye.
Novak Djokovic lost a match in Australia.
It doesn’t happen very much. He’s won the past four Australian Opens that he has played in, and 10 overall, but he fell 6-4, 6-4 to Alex de Minaur of Australia in the United Cup, a mixed-team competition.
The loss isn’t much of a concern. It happens.
But Djokovic is nursing a right wrist injury and received medical attention throughout the United Cup. No one knows how to take care of his body better than Djokovic. He suffered through significant injuries (hamstring and abdominal tears) at his last two Australian Opens and still won. Still, wrist injuries to tennis players can be major red flags, flaring up unpredictably at the worst moments, and there is no way to hide them.
Like Nadal, Naomi Osaka did not forget how to play tennis.
She won a match and lost another in Brisbane, but most importantly she played five tight sets, including two tiebreakers, and gave Karolina Pliskova all she could handle in her first tournament after a year layoff due to injury, struggles with mental health and maternity leave.
Their ball makes a different sound when it comes off Osaka’s racket, a kind of firecracker pop that serves as a quick reminder of why tennis is better when Osaka is playing. And the way she whacks her thigh with her left fist as she gets ready for a big point… if that doesn’t get the juices flowing, it’s hard to say what will.
Iga Swiatek is in a good place.
Yes, the world No 1 was winning a lot of matches for Poland in the United Cup, often blitzing her opponents in her usual way, but she also seemed lighter, not carrying around that ranking like Atlas trying to hold up the globe.
She even joked about the thing she hates to joke about – “Iga’s Bakery”. That’s the nickname the media has given to all of her 6-0 (bagel) and 6-1 (breadstick) sets. After she and Hubert Hurkacz partnered to beat Spain 6-0, 6-0, she said she would consider hiring Hurkacz as one of her bakers.
Coco Gauff had about as good a start as she could have wanted.
She headed to Auckland to defend her season-opening title in the ASB Classic. Gauff won the last Grand Slam at the U.S. Open. Starting the season as a Grand Slam champion can mess with the mind.
Gauff reeled five straight wins, taking 10 of 11 sets, defending her title with a win over Elina Svitolina, healthy once more, thankfully, in the hard-fought final, 6-7 (4), 6-3, 6-3. Gauff was clearly wiped out at the WTA Finals in early November. She skipped the Billie Jean King Cup finals the next week in Spain. After a nice little break, she looked rested and sharp.
She could get a bad draw and lose in the first round of the Australian Open, but she could not have kicked off her season any better.
Svitolina shut herself down after the U.S. Open with a stress fracture in her ankle.
Returning to competition on hard courts, which aggravated the injury during the summer, is not ideal. But Svitolina appeared to be playing, and winning, without pain in New Zealand. That’s good news.
(Hannah Peters/Getty Images)
Frances Tiafoe took the court for the first time in a while without Wayne Ferreira guiding him.
Tiafoe and Ferreira parted ways after spending the better part of four seasons together and making the semifinals of the U.S. Open in 2022.
Tiafoe made the top 10 for the first time last year but slipped in the final months of the season and said he was entering 2024 looking to have more fun, play more aggressively, and be less results-focused under the guidance of Diego Moyano.
“A lot of 2023 I was putting a lot of pressure on myself,” he said. “I really wanted to do well. It was really hard for me. Still had a great year, but it wasn’t what I wanted to do in the big events.”
Tiafoe went 1-1 at the Hong Kong Open, losing his quarterfinal match to J.C. Shang of China.
Which brings us to this: keep an eye on J.C. Shang this season.
He is just 18 years old and already showing off acres of upside. Shang has spent much of his time at the IMG Academy during his tennis life. (IMG once upon a time guided Li Na of China to her groundbreaking career.) He qualified for the Australian Open last year and won a match before losing to Tiafoe. He also qualified for the French Open.
In addition to beating Tiafoe in Hong Kong, he beat the highly regarded Botic van de Zandschulp. Shang lost to Andrey Rublev, who enjoyed a tip-top first week, in the semifinals.
Again, take those results for what they are — early season wins off veterans trying to find their rhythm – but when teenagers beat seasoned pros it catches the eye.
Emma Raducanu is alive and playing tennis again.
The 2021 U.S. Open champion had triple surgery last spring – two wrists and one ankle. She has set expectations low and is hoping everyone else does, too, since she’s basically starting from scratch, ranked 301st in the world when the year started.
“I feel reborn,” she said.
She moved well and crushed some backhands in her opening match, which she won. She was on the verge of winning a second before Svitolina caught her in three sets.
She will now play in the Australian Open main draw without having to go through qualifying, which might be a curse in disguise. She could probably use the matches and did pretty well the last time she played qualifiers at a Grand Slam at that 2021 U.S. Open.
Like Nadal though, Raducanu is just hoping to stay healthy.
(Hannah Peters/Getty Images)
Jelena Ostapenko, the fiery Latvian, hasn’t changed one bit during the break.
Ostapenko was not happy with a call by the chair umpire Julie Kjendlie during her loss to Victoria Azarenka.
“You will never be on my match again,” Ostapenko railed at Kjendlie. “You ruin my matches.”
So on-brand.
A few very big names decided to skip warm-up week altogether.
Carlos Alcaraz, Jannik Sinner and Daniil Medvedev are heading into the year’s first Grand Slam without any competitive tuneups. That’s three of the top four men, but also three players who played a ton of tennis last year and in the case of Alcaraz and Sinner, two players who are still trying to figure out how to optimize their schedules.
Alcaraz also missed the Australian Open last season with a last-minute injury and he certainly did not want that to happen again.
Sinner reached the finals of the season-ending ATP Finals and then led Italy to the Davis Cup.
Medvedev, well, he does a lot of unorthodox things when it comes to tennis, like hitting a forehand like someone trying to swat a mosquito in the backseat of a Volkswagen Beetle.
May it ever be thus.
(Top photo: Chris Hyde/Getty Images)
Whatever you do, don’t think of a bird.
Now: What kind of bird are you not thinking about? A pigeon? A bald eagle? Something more poetic, like a skylark or a nightingale? In any case, would you say that this bird you aren’t thinking about is real?
Before you answer, read this poem, which is quite literally about not thinking of a bird.
Human consciousness is full of riddles. Neuroscientists, philosophers and dorm-room stoners argue continually about what it is and whether it even exists. For Wallace Stevens, the experience of having a mind was a perpetual source of wonder, puzzlement and delight — perfectly ordinary and utterly transcendent at the same time. He explored the mysteries and pleasures of consciousness in countless poems over the course of his long poetic career. It was arguably his great theme.
Stevens was born in 1879 and published his first book, “Harmonium,” in 1923, making him something of a late bloomer among American modernists. For much of his adult life, he worked as an executive for the Hartford Accident and Indemnity Company, rising to the rank of vice president. He viewed insurance less as a day job to support his poetry than as a parallel vocation. He pursued both activities with quiet diligence, spending his days at the office and composing poems in his head as he walked to and from work.
As a young man, Stevens dreamed of traveling to Europe, though he never crossed the Atlantic. In middle age he made regular trips to Florida, and his poems are frequently infused with ideas of Paris and Rome and memories of Key West. Others partake of the stringent beauty of New England. But the landscapes he explores, wintry or tropical, provincial or cosmopolitan, are above all mental landscapes, created by and in the imagination.
Are those worlds real?
Let’s return to the palm tree and its avian inhabitant, in that tranquil Key West sunset of the mind.
Until then, we find consolation in fangles.
When the director Rob Reiner cast his leads in the 1986 film “Stand by Me,” he looked for young actors who were as close as possible to the personalities of the four children they’d be playing. There was the wise beyond his years kid from a rough family (River Phoenix), the slightly dim worrywart (Jerry O’Connell), the cutup with a temper (Corey Feldman) and the sensitive, bookish boy.
Wil Wheaton was perfect for that last one, Gordie Lachance, a doe-eyed child who is ignored by his family in favor of his late older brother. Now, 40 years later, he’s traveling the country to attend anniversary screenings of the film, alongside O’Connell and Feldman, which has thrown him back into the turmoil that he felt as an adolescent.
Wheaton has channeled those emotions and his on-set memories into his latest project: narrating a new audiobook version of “The Body,” the 1982 Stephen King novella on which the film was based.
A few years ago, Wheaton started to float the idea of returning to the story that gave him his big break — that of a quartet of boys in 1959 Oregon, in their last days before high school, setting out to find a classmate’s dead body. “I’ve been telling the story of ‘Stand By Me’ since I was 12 years old,” he said.
But this time was different. Wheaton, who has narrated dozens of audiobooks, including Andy Weir’s “The Martian” and Ernest Cline’s “Ready Player One,” says he has come to enjoy narration more than screen acting. “I’m safe, I’m in the booth, nobody’s looking at me and I can just tell you a story.”
The fact that he, an older man looking back on his younger years, is narrating a story about an older man looking back on his younger years, is not lost on Wheaton. King’s original story is bathed in nostalgia. Coming to terms with death and loss is one of its primary themes.
Two days after appearing on stage at the Academy Awards as part of a tribute to Reiner — who was murdered in 2025 alongside his wife, Michele — Wheaton got on the phone to talk about recording the audiobook, reliving his favorite scenes from the film and reexamining a quintessential story of childhood loss through the lens of his own.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
“I felt really close to him, and my memory of him.”
Wheaton on channeling a co-star’s performance.
There’s this wonderful scene in “Stand By Me.” Gordie and Chris are walking down the tracks talking about junior high. Chris is telling Gordie, “I wish to hell I was your dad, because I care about you, and he obviously doesn’t.”
It’s just so honest and direct, in a way that kids talk to each other that adults don’t. And I think that one of the reasons that really sticks with people, and that piece really lands on a lot of audiences, and has for 40 years, is, just too many people have been Gordie in that scene.
That scene is virtually word for word taken from the text of the book. And when I was narrating that, I made a deliberate choice to do my best to recreate what River did in that scene.
“You’re just a kid,
Gordie–”
“I wish to fuck
I was your father!”
he said angrily.
“You wouldn’t go around
talking about takin those stupid shop courses if I was!
It’s like
God gave you something,
all those stories
you can make up, and He said:
This is what we got for you, kid.
Try not to lose it.
But kids lose everything
unless somebody looks out for them and if your folks
are too fucked up to do it
then maybe I ought to.”
I watched that scene a couple of times because I really wanted — I don’t know why it was so important to me to — well, I know: because I loved him, and I miss him. And I wanted to bring him into this as best as I could, right?
So I was reading that scene, and the words are identical to the script. And I had this very powerful flashback to being on the train tracks that day in Cottage Grove, Oregon. And I could see River standing next to them. They’re shooting my side of the scene and there’s River, right next to the camera, doing his off-camera dialogue, and there’s the sound guy, and there’s the boom operator. There’s my key light.
I could hear and feel it. It was the weirdest thing. It’s like I was right back there.
I was able to really take in the emotional memory of being Gordie in all of those scenes. So when I was narrating him and I’m me and I’m old with all of this experience, I just drew on what I remembered from being that little boy and what I remember of those friendships and what they meant to me and what they mean to me today.
“Rob gave me a gift. Rob gave me a career.”
Wheaton recalls the “Stand By Me” director’s way with kids on set, as well as his recent Oscars tribute.
Rob really encouraged us to be kids.
Jerry tells the most amazing story about that scene, where we were all sitting around, and doing our bit, and he improvised. He was just goofing around — we were just playing — and he said something about spitting water at the fat kid.
We get to the end of the scene, and he hears Rob. Rob comes around from behind the thing, and he goes, “Jerry!” And Jerry thinks, “Oh no, I’m in trouble. I’m in trouble because I improvised, and I’m not supposed to improvise.”
The context for Jerry is that he had been told by the adults in his life, “Sit on your hands and shut up. Stop trying to be a cutup. Stop trying to be funny. Stop disrupting people. Just be quiet.” And Jerry thinks, “Oh my God. I didn’t shut up. I’m in trouble. I’m gonna get fired.”
Rob leans in to all of us, and Rob says, “Hey, guys, do you see that? More of that. Do that!”
The whole time when you’re a kid actor, you’re just around all these adults who are constantly telling you to grow up. They’re mad that you’re being a kid. Rob just created an environment where not only was it supported that we would be kids — and have fun, and follow those kid instincts and do what was natural — it was expected. It was encouraged. We were supposed to do it.
They chanted together:
“I don’t shut up,
I grow up.
And when I look at you I throw up.”
“Then your mother goes around the corner
and licks it up,”
I said, and hauled ass out of there,
giving them the finger over my shoulder as I went.
I never had any friends later on
like the ones I had when I was twelve.
Jesus, did you?
When we were at the Oscars, I looked at Jerry. And we looked at this remarkable assemblage of the most amazingly talented, beautiful artists and storytellers. We looked around, and Jerry leans down, and he said, “We all got our start with Rob Reiner. He trusted every single one of us.”
And to stand there for him, when I really thought that I would be standing with him to talk about this stuff — it was a lot.
“I was really really really excited — like jumping up and down.”
The scene Wheaton was most looking forward to narrating: the tale of Lard Ass Hogan.
I was so excited to narrate it. It’s a great story! It’s a funny story. It’s such a lovely break — it’s an emotional and tonal shift from what’s happening in the movie.
I know this as a writer: You work to increase and release tension throughout a narrative, and Stephen King uses humor really effectively to release that tension. But it also raises the stakes, because we have these moments of joy and these moments of things being very silly in the midst of a lot of intensity.
That’s why the story of Lard Ass Hogan is so fun for me to tell. Because in the middle of that, we stop to do something that’s very, very fun, and very silly and very celebratory.
“Will you shut up and let him tell it?”
Teddy hollered.
Vern blinked.
“Sure. Yeah.
Okay.”
“Go on, Gordie,”
Chris said. “It’s not really much—”
“Naw,
we don’t expect much from a wet end like you,”
Teddy said,
“but tell it anyway.”
I cleared my throat. “So anyway.
It’s Pioneer Days,
and on the last night
they have these three big events.
There’s an egg-roll for the little kids and a sack-race for kids that are like eight or nine,
and then there’s the pie-eating contest.
And the main guy of the story
is this fat kid nobody likes
named Davie Hogan.”
When I narrate this story — whenever there is a moment of levity or humor, whenever there are those brief little moments that are the seasoning of the meal that makes it all so real and relatable — yes, it was very important to me to capture those moments.
I’m shifting in my chair, so I can feel each of those characters. It’s something that doesn’t exist in live action. It doesn’t exist in any other media.
“I feel the loss.”
Wheaton remembers River Phoenix.
The novella “The Body” is very much about Gordie remembering Chris. It’s darker, and it’s more painful, than the movie is.
I’ve been watching the movie on this tour and seeing River a lot. I remember him as a 14- and 15-year-old kid who just seemed so much older, and so much more experienced and so much wiser than me, and I’m only a year younger than him.
What hurts me now, and what I really felt when I was narrating this, is knowing what River was going through then. We didn’t know. I still don’t know the extent of how he was mistreated, but I know that he was. I know that adults failed him. That he should have been protected in every way that matters. And he just wasn’t.
And I, like Gordie, remember a boy who was loving. So loving, and generous and cared deeply about everyone around him, all the time. Who deserved to live a full life. Who had so much to offer the world. And it’s so unfair that he’s gone and taken from us. I had to go through a decades-long grieving process to come to terms with him dying.
Near the end
of 1971,
Chris
went into a Chicken Delight in Portland
to get a three-piece Snack Bucket.
Just ahead of him,
two men started arguing
about which one had been first in line. One of them pulled a knife.
Chris,
who had always been the best of us
at making peace,
stepped between them and was stabbed in the throat.
The man with the knife had spent time in four different institutions;
he had been released from Shawshank State Prison
only the week before.
Chris died almost instantly.
It is a privilege that I was allowed to tell this story. I get to tell Gordie Lachance’s story as originally imagined by Stephen King, with all of the experience of having lived my whole adult life with the memory of spending three months in Gordie Lachance’s skin.
Welcome to Great Adaptations, the Book Review’s regular multiple-choice quiz about printed works that have gone on to find new life as movies, television shows, theatrical productions and more. This week’s challenge highlights offbeat television shows that began as comic books. Just tap or click your answers to the five questions below. And scroll down after you finish the last question for links to the comics and their screen versions.
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