WIMBLEDON, England — Relentlessly competitive and ultimately unbeatable on the red clay at the French Open, Rafael Nadal could not win so much as a set on the grass at Wimbledon this year.
It was the first time Nadal, the great Spanish champion, had lost in the first round in singles at a Grand Slam event, and his unlikely tormentor on Court 1 on Monday was Steve Darcis, a Belgian veteran ranked just 135th who spent part of this season competing in the minor leagues of professional tennis, the challenger circuit.
But against the fifth-seeded Nadal, the flashy Darcis was too much to handle, producing winners with his forehand, timely first serves and defense off the full stretch that often appeared to catch Nadal by surprise on the slick grass that is part of the equation on opening day at Wimbledon.
In the end, Darcis’s 7-6 (4), 7-6 (8), 6-4 victory seemed surprisingly straightforward, almost shockingly so, for what was one of the biggest upsets in Wimbledon history. It was also the second year in a row that Nadal had given an aggressive outsider a chance to make a bigger name for himself.
“Nobody was expecting me to win today,” Darcis said.
A year ago, Nadal was beaten in the second round by the 100th-ranked Czech Lukas Rosol on Centre Court, with the fifth set being played under the closed roof. Nadal, because of knee problems, did not play another match for seven months before returning in February.
It has been a remarkably successful comeback, with Nadal winning seven of the nine tournaments he had played before Wimbledon, including his eighth French Open little more than two weeks ago. But in an attempt to protect his left knee, he played all but one of those nine tournaments on clay.
Though he had originally planned to play a warm-up tournament on grass in Halle, Germany, he withdrew from that event and elected to spend the week resting in Majorca instead. He arrived at Wimbledon last Tuesday and was unable to make up for missed grass-court matches.
“Obviously I wanted to play,” Nadal said of Halle. “But today, yes, we cannot come back. We cannot come two weeks before. That’s what happened. I didn’t have that chance. I tried my best. Was not possible. That’s all I can say, just congratulate the opponent. At the end, it’s not a tragedy. That is sport.”
It was an inadvertent echo of a long-ago quote from Boris Becker when he was stunned in the second round of Wimbledon by the Australian journeyman Peter Doohan in 1987: “No one died out there,” Becker said. “I just lost a tennis match.”
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