Why does that one stick out? Well, of course part of it could be that I am a Nadal fan. But also, I was notably doing other things many other years. For much of the 2000s and 2010s, the Wimbledon Final lined up with 4th of July Weekend in the US (thanks, England!). And for most of those same two decades, that weekend meant a trip to Montreal for their Jazz Festival. That's where I was when quite a few other epic finals were played - from Federer's 2009 win over Roddick (the 16-14 5th set win), or Djokovic's five-set Triumph over Federer in 2014, or Murray finally breaking through in 2013. We of course had 2019, when Novak won against Federer (bleh), but of course that happened in real time at the same exact second England was prevailing against New Zealand in maybe the most dramatic cricket match ever, featuring a Golden over. Suffice to say attention was divided.
No, 2010 is it. And for some weird reasons that will make up much of the piece. Nadal's win was fairly routine, straight sets over an overmatched Tomas Berdych. His semifinal win over Andy Murray was in a way the real final, but even taht was fairly routine. That Wimbledon title didn't start that way, with Nadal needing five sets in both the second and third round to knock of Robin Haase and Philipp Petzschner (granted, both like Top-35 to Top-25 players in their day), and in the Quarterfinal against his then nemesis Robin Soderling, Nadal dropped the first set quickly. He then stormed back to win the last three sets, and as explained earlier, win six more sets easily for his second Wimbledon. At this point, he reclaimed #1 ranking, he won Wimbledon for the second straight time he played there, he had 8 slams; Djokovic had one. He was king of the world.
But no, why I remember this was I watched the match at home with my friends after maybe for the only time in my life having a house party at my parents house. Now, let's set some context. I was 19, as were my friends. This was the summer after Freshman year of college, where most of my high school extended friends group still had their parents living in the area (so we were all back in town) and few had internships or any real responsibilities (so we were all free). It was a glorious summer, full of vuvuzelas (the 2010 World Cup), and much more. My parents weren't gone all summer, but went for July 4th with some of their friends to Washington DC. So I was alone on July 4th Weekend, with my favorite tennis player set to play in the final.
So what did we do? Of my main friend group, more than half are avid tennis fans, so the idea was have all of them, plus the extended group that capped at like maybe 25 people, over for a long night of drinks, merriment, bad pizza, and so much more, with the plan being go to bed way late and wake up for a late Breakfast at Wimbledon. That plan, amazingly so, went off without a hitch perfectly.
The weekend actually started a bit away from my house, but still a pressing memory and sign of elation that we all had around that time. It was where about six or seven of the core nine of us met another group of friends at a hookah bar in the Edison / New Brunswick area. Not the more shady one that we frequented often back then (named Mist - still open, to my knowledge), but one with food (yeah, weird combo). My only real memory of that time was Katy Perry's California Gurls playing on the TV at one point - easily one of the great Songs of Summer of all time (as much as we hate Katy now). God knows what nonsense the group of like 10-12 of us actually talked about. It was just a magical time.
As was the next night at my house. I should clarify - it wasn't like our group were a bunch of prudes. We had house parties. But never at my house for the main reason I just hated hosting people. But this time, I decided to sack up and do so with my parents gone for the full weekend (Monday was the Bank Holiday, since July 4th was the Sunday). Our trusty friend [name redacted] used his fake to get a couple handles. I had one or two stashed away. We got a case or two of shit beers for pong / flip cup, and a case or so of good beers. Given that there was anywhere from 10-25 of us over the course of say 9pm - 4am, it wasn't even all that much alcohol. It was tame in the sense no one got overloaded. No one threw up. Don't even think anyone was all that hungover the next day. It was just a night of a lot of fun.
I remember a lot of games of pong and flip cup - us using a long folding table that we put over a tarp in our kitchen. Yeah - we used a tarp - I wasn't going to have beer splash over the kitchen tiles (it should be noted - much of the reason I normally didn't ahve my friends over is our basement was unfinished). We got Pizza from somewhere and I believe Wawa aroudn midnight (had two DDs). We smoked a j or two on the patio. We blasted all types of music, back in the days when it was playing random youtube videos or iTunes playlists in the days before Spotify. We watched old tennis clips for it seemed like hours. We almost did another Wawa run at 3am when cooler heads somehow prevailed (the DDs were gone / asleep by then). We just enjoyed a damn night like 19 year olds should - and despite the gender ratio being roughly 18 guys, 7 girls, and none of the guys were dating any of the girls except for one couple, somehow no one hooked up (which I guess you could say is a bad thing, given what a night like that is supposed to be).
To cap it all off of course, the 12 of us or so that stayed the night got up to watch Nadal easily fend of Tomas Berdych and win Wimbledon again. And somehow, because of the legendary (in my mind) nigth before it, the memory of Nadal beating Berdych is seared into my mind - meaningfulness by association in a way. It was one the more boring, straightforward major wins of his career, especially for those outside the French Open, but somehow also for me one of the msot memorable, as for that 24 hour period, both Rafael Nadal, and a 19-year old me, were on top of the world.
