WHEN WILL WE LEARN? NEVER COUNT OUT NADAL AS THE G.O.A.T.

As if playing possum, in suggesting injuries could force him into retirement, the King of Clay made another gallant stand in Paris, ousting Djokovic en route to a possible 22nd Grand Slam title

    The chants were so thunderous — “RAFA! RAFA! RAFA!” — they could have exploded past the champagne and tart stands outside and knocked over the nine-foot statue sculpted in his steely image, like that of a Spanish bull. To say Rafael Nadal is the Mona Lisa and Stade Roland Garros is the Louvre would understate how much the French adore this maestro. Their worship is such, they might even bump the famed fighter pilot someday and put Nadal’s name on the entire complex, too.

     He has owned their red clay like no athlete has ruled a sports surface or venue on this planet. It’s why the natives regard him as one of their own, some feat in a city defined by snobs dwelling in arrondissements. Just the same, amid the Rafa love-ins, they’ve also grown to loathe Novak Djokovic more than a full season of “Emily In Paris.”

     Which explains why they weren’t ready to see their beloved icon fade away just yet, especially against their appointed scoundrel. And why they wouldn’t let him lose, in what will go down as one of Nadal’s grandest and guttiest moments in a career loaded with both. They booed Djokovic when he followed Nadal into Court Philippe Chatrier and never let up, angering John McEnroe in the broadcast booth but delighting the global legions who love Rafa. The next four hours and 21 minutes qualified as otherworldly bliss, filled with drop-dead rallies and momentum shifts and beautiful shotmaking and service breaks and games of double-digit minutes, with Nadal somehow allowed to repeatedly blow off the 25-second serve clock — the chair ump was French — while stalling to catch his breath and rest his creaky bones, days from his 36th birthday.

     This was a landmark moment for tennis, the French Open and all sport — and a massive shock to the system of anyone ready to bid adieu to Nadal and anoint the tempestuous, anti-vaxxer Serb as Greatest Of All Time. Not quite yet, said Nadal, defying his own plaintive warnings that this could be his final run at Roland Garros. Even after winning, he continued to play a vague game about his future, saying with a smile wider than the Seine, “One of those magic nights for me. … See you, by the way, in two days,” alluding to his semifinal versus Alexander Zverev, “and that’s the only thing I can say.”

     Is he playing possum? Does he tolerate pain like few elite athletes we’ve seen? Does he push exhaustion aside with meticulous ease? His chronic foot crisis, his recovery from a fractured rib, the aches and pains that had him suggesting imminent retirement on Sunday — all were forgotten after a four-set grindout of a dazed Djokovic under Tuesday night lights that extended into Wednesday morning. It was Part 59 of an incomparable rivalry, another prizefight played with rackets and a fuzzy ball.

     The loser was left to take a subtle shot, suggesting Nadal is a con man about injuries. “I'm not surprised at all,'' Djokovic said. “It's not the first time that he is able, a few days after he's injured and barely walking, to come out 100 percent physically fit.”

     He also moped about the industry that has made him rich, famous and polarizing. “TV decides. That’s the world we live in,’’ Djokovic said of the late start time, designed for the event’s new media partner, Amazon Prime.

     It won’t be Nadal’s final chapter. We know that much. Rather, the victory could extend his all-time record to 22 Grand Slam titles, which would place him two ahead of Djokovic in an amazing historical race that has spanned years and still has juice left. It reopens the possibility that Djokovic, who hasn’t shrouded his ambition to own the big record and be declared the G.O.A.T., will sabotage his ultimate goal by continuing to reject even one jab of COVID-19 vaccine. Wimbledon will let him play for now, but what about the U.S. Open … and the Australian Open, where he was kicked out of the country for not vaxxing? It also means Nadal, with Roger Federer drifting away into his 40s, just might ascend to G.O.A.T. status if he can maintain some modicum of good health.

     Even if he isn’t interested in the distinction. “I don't care much if I am the one, or not the one, or the best of the history, or not the best of the history,” Nadal said recently. “Honestly, I don't care much.”

     Besides, he doesn’t need a record to frame his legacy. Nadal writes his own narrative with incremental feats of survivalism. Let Djokovic bog down in vaccine politics and attempts to create an independent players organization. Let him be the radical. Nadal is the tennis savant, period. A loss at Roland Garros, where he is looking for a 14th title after improving his record to a preposterous 110-3, would have been akin to a man in an older woman’s wig throwing cake at the Mona Lisa. That actually went down the other day at the Louvre. “Sacre bleu” doesn’t happen twice in the same week in France.

     “I lost to a better player today,” said Djokovic, who had won 22 straight sets until Nadal won nine of the first 11 games and established the night’s tone. “Had my chances. Didn’t use them. That’s it.”

     Nadal entered the showdown with a warning that retirement could be near. In a career marked by a bulldog’s resolve and persistence through injuries, he says he never has played in such pain. “The match with Djokovic could be my last here,” he said days before. “Being honest, every match that I play here, I don’t know if it’s going to be my last here in Roland Garros in my career, no? Two and a half weeks ago, I don’t know if I would be able to be here. So just enjoying the fact that I am here for one more year. What I’m trying to do is enjoy and keep living the dream to play tennis.

     “I am a player living with an injury. That’s it. Unfortunately, my day-by-day is difficult, honestly. Of course, it’s difficult for me to accept the situation sometimes, no? I don’t know what can happen in the near future with my career.”

     Once an unfailing optimist, capable of winning with his mind and spirit alone, Nadal has become a realist. But he’s also using the aging process as fuel. No one wants this to be his final French kiss, least of all his local devotees. At least he prevented Djokovic from beating him twice in two years on the Paris clay. Djoker apparently has recovered from his debacle in January, when he refused to meet Australia’s vaccination requirements. He was detained in a ratty Melbourne hotel with asylum seekers and kicked out of the country, enabling Nadal to win the Open and take the lead in the Grand Slam race.

     Astoundingly, Djokovic doesn’t hold a grudge against Australia for deporting him, saying he’d love to return next season if the country’s new government leaders permit him. Would you believe he gained perspective from the ordeal? “We underestimate freedom,” Djokovic said. “Until you actually live something like that and see what the circumstances are, then you don't really have an idea of what it feels like when somebody strips away the freedom from you.”

     How about taking the vaccine, then?

     We’d love to see Djokovic and Nadal duel forever. Theirs is the last monumental competition left in sports, where rivalries are diluted by superteam-fueled free agency, elite quarterback egos and one-sided team falloffs. Phil Mickelson never remotely challenged Tiger Woods the way Nadal, Djokovic and Federer challenged each other. Cowboys-Commanders doesn’t have the same ring. Aaron Rodgers ridicules the Bears. The only national NFL rivalry is when Tom Brady faces Bill Belichick. I guess we still have Yankees-Red Sox and Dodgers-Giants, but who’s watching.? Oilers-Flames was a hoot in the Stanley Cup playoffs, but America wasn’t into the Battle of Alberta … or even sure where Alberta is.

     Of particular intrigue in the Djokovic-Nadal scrums: As personalities, they could not be more diametrically different. Nadal is a gracious hero of the people, just another friendly local on the island of Mallorca, still humble after global superstardom and the first in line to be vaccinated two years ago. Djokovic has a messiah complex, from his ongoing refusal to seek even one jab for COVID to temper tantrums that erupt with disturbing abruptness, such as when he smashed a ball that struck a linesperson in the throat and was defaulted at the U.S. Open. In the first round at Roland Garros, he was booed simply for shouting after an intense rally. Nadal never has been fond of Djokovic, going back to the days he’d do impressions of other players. Said Nadal: “I think this is not a show, no? I think this is a sport. My opinion, the show or the star is the tennis. It’s not the imitation of no one.”

     Class vs. Ass.

     It’s not that Djokovic is the second coming of McEnroe, a confessed rabble-rouser to this day. Even McEnroe wonders why Djokovic is reviled in so many quarters, balking on the European broadcast as the boos rained down. “It blows,” he said. “No other player has had to deal with more adversity (than Novak),” said McEnroe, who apparently believes not being vaccinated is bad luck. “It’s unfair, I’ve got to say that. This guy has turned lemons into lemonade more often than any player in the history of tennis, and if you don’t think it bothers him, you’re nuts. He’s a remarkable player and person.”

     Person? Really? When his contemporaries are the elegant likes of Nadal and Federer? Nadal couldn’t help but take his own shot after Djokovic was deported. “I do not agree with a lot of things he did. He knew the conditions,” he said. “The only thing that I can say is I believe in what the people who know about medicine says, and if those people say that we need to get vaccinated, we need to get the vaccine. I went through COVID. I have been vaccinated twice. If you do this, you don’t have any problem to play here. The world in my opinion has been suffering enough to not follow the rules.”

     Said McEnroe: “He’s been wanting to be respected at that same level, and that sort of fuels him but I think it’s unfair, personally. It’s something that I can’t explain. Some of it can be at times your own fault, but I think quite a bit of it isn’t. It’s just that these other guys are so amazing. The way Rafa and Roger handle themselves, it’s hard to get to that level. Plus they were succeeding before him, so he’s been catching up the whole time. But he actually shows a lot of emotion, he’s fired up. People should love that and the French, they should love that. I can’t explain it.”

     It’s easily explained. The man they love was threatened by his fiercest rival, an anti-vaxxer with a scowl, and survived again. The French know their villains, from Marquis de Sade to Chef Skinner in “Ratatouille,” so Djokovic qualifies. By now, they’ve forgotten him, focusing on Zverev, who eliminated 19-year-old phenom Carlos Alcaraz and saved Nadal from a pressurized Spanish succession narrative.

     Thus, his faithful have only one chore before Friday.

     “RAFA! RAFA! RAFA!” they’ll chant, all day and night.

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     Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.