Rafael Nadal Makes Successful Start in Flushing Meadow, Different to Two Years Earlier
Courtesy of ITTF
Gold medallist at the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games, the winner of some 14 Grand Slam Men’s Singles titles, Spain’s Rafael Nadal made the perfect start to his campaign on Tuesday 1st September to regain the Men’s Singles title at the 2015 United States Open in Flushing Meadow, a title he won in 2011 and 2013.
Occupying the no.8 seeded position, the 29 year old tennis star beat Croatia’s 18 year old Borna Coric (6-3, 6-2, 4-6, 6-4). Success for the Spaniard but two years earlier, he had experienced defeat; he was beaten by Estee Ackerman, a young lady who celebrated her 14th birthday on Monday 31st August, the day proceedings began this year in New York.
New York Times
The New York Times explains in Grace Notes by James Barron
The Time an 11-Year-Old Took Down Nadal
August 30, 2015
So, about Nadal,” Estee Ackerman said in her unassuming way, about to relive the summer of 2013 serve by serve, volley by volley, point by point.
The summer of 2013 — a summer when Rafael Nadal was not struggling, and not appearing in Tommy Hilfiger underwear ads, either — was the summer that Estee Ackerman beat him. In table tennis.
It happened in August, a couple of weeks before Mr. Nadal defeated Novak Djokovic 6-2, 3-6, 6-4, 6-1 to win the United States Open. Estee was 11 at the time.
“I don’t think he knew who he was playing with,” she said the other day, her steeliness edging out modesty. She is the top-ranked girl in table tennis in the under-15 category in New York State and the sixth-ranked girl in the same category nationwide, according to the United States Table Tennis Association.
“I remember I smashed one,” she said. “He looked really surprised. I mean, he’s not bad, you know.” Later, in a conversation about other well-known people she has faced, she upgraded that assessment, saying he was “somewhat good.”
There are tennis fans who might not even say that about him after the year he has had. He is seeded eighth in the Open, which begins on Monday (Estee’s 14th birthday, by coincidence). She will be watching from the stands — and remembering what ran through her mind as she prepared to face off against him.
“I wouldn’t say I was nervous because I was pretty confident I was better,” she said. “He couldn’t do a two-handed backhand like he does in tennis. I mean, I do play some tennis” — she said this with a knowing inflection, as if to convey the idea that she has had personal experience with tennis rackets, not just Ping-Pong paddles — “but I’m not that good.”
Not in tennis, perhaps. Table tennis is another matter. As the website Table Tennis Nation put it, “One of the coolest things about table tennis is that you can lose a match to a little girl.”
The chef Bobby Flay discovered this during an appearance last year on Rachael Ray’s talk show. “There was a show coming out called ‘Beat Bobby Flay,’ ” Estee said. So she did. It was the outcome that Ms. Ray’s producers must have been counting on when they brought her in — without warning Mr. Flay.
She also defeated Alecko Eskandarian, an assistant coach of the New York Cosmos, in April. On that occasion, she played an initial round or two under a pseudonym, Francine. The organizers of the event wanted some suspense, some drama. They did not want the other young players vying for the chance to face Mr. Eskandarian to recognize her too soon.
“I was playing with my left hand to keep myself undercover, you know?” she said. “Alecko Eskandarian, he’s a big shot; he thinks he’s the best.” Even as Francine, she showed him. “He said, ‘I thought I was just playing kids.’ And the M.C. says, ‘Why don’t you try hitting with your right hand?’ So we start playing for points, and he was like, ‘You hustled me, and your serves were crazy.’ He had no chance.”
Ryan Willard, of Table Tennis Nation, said that table tennis was like “chess and boxing all at the same time.” And, Mr. Willard added, that plays to Estee’s strengths.
“It’s very, very disciplined,” he said, “and with the discipline she has, it will serve her well and give her a much longer career.” But her enthusiasm has also impressed him.
“The thing about Ping-Pong is, generally when you get to a tournament, it’s somber, it’s serious, it feels like you’re in a library,” he said. “She has a spark. She feeds off the crowd. The fun part to watch is her excitement and her passion when she plays, and she’s always looking for new and different challenges.”
Table tennis originated in England among stiff-upper-lip types who used cigar-box tops for paddles. China asserted its dominance in 1959, when a player named Rong Guotuan won the World Table Tennis Championships, the first citizen of the People’s Republic to win a world title in any sport. Estee has played members of the Chinese Olympic team.
“That was the equivalent for someone to play with N.B.A. All-Stars,” her father, Glenn Ackerman, said.
Estee took up the game because her brother, who is three years older, was playing with their father in the family’s basement in West Hempstead, on Long Island. “I thought to myself, why not give it a try,” she recalled. She has said she was so small then that all they could see was her paddle flying back and forth.
Her father, who owns a funeral home in the Bronx, said, “She joined what my son was doing.” But Mr. Ackerman had already pointed the way toward table tennis. “I did not want my kids to be so involved with electronic gadgets,” he said. “Parents and children don’t spend time together, and besides, with Estee, how am I going to play basketball with a 7-year-old girl?”
When he realized that she was better than good, he saw possibilities. “I said maybe we could popularize the sport in America,” he said. “We have an obesity problem. Not everyone can play basketball. Why can’t they do this? It’s low injury. In football, there are concussions.”
Estee will soon start her first year at Samuel H. Wang Yeshiva University High School for Girls in Holliswood, Queens, where she said her favorite subjects would be recess and math. She will keep up her heavy practice schedule — four hours a day, five days a week — as she prepares for the Olympic trials in January.
She has played in the national table tennis championships. She talked about her final event at the competition in 2012, in Las Vegas. “We saw I was scheduled for this match for 7:30 p.m. Friday,” said Estee, who comes from a family of observant Orthodox Jews.
“I said to myself, This probably would happen to me one day. I said, ‘Are you allowed to play table tennis on Shabbos?’ ”
She decided — her father said the decision was hers alone — not to play the match.
“They defaulted me,” she said. “It was disappointing.” But she said she still felt she had made the right decision. “And,” she added, “I got the publicity when I got back to New York.”
Then there was the publicity that came from her match against Mr. Nadal, which proved, at least to Estee, that table tennis is not tennis.
“Tennis, the court’s huge,” she said. “The drills I’m doing, I’m exhausted already. People think tennis is a similar game, but I think tennis is much more work. There’s a different stroke. And bigger swings.”
