Nadal soon to announce whether he will play Wimbledon

In a farcical scene that threw another dollop of surrealism on five wacko tennis weeks in Europe, Rafael Nadal departed Wimbledon 2009 for good Friday night, almost in the dark and almost alone.

Outside the gates waited one enduring fan, a young British woman, as the defending champion and three other men -- including Novak Djokovic -- walked toward Gate 16 at going-on-10 p.m., only to find the gate locked and the guards gone home.

“How do you get out of Wimbledon?” joked Nadal’s manager.

They got out by retracing steps down to Gate 13, and the No. 1 player in the world got out with pained reluctance by withdrawing, becoming the first Wimbledon titlist since Goran Ivanisevic in 2002 and only the fourth in the Open Era not to defend the silver gilt cup with the pineapple on top.

Tendinitis in the knees meant that the man who won Wimbledon 2008 in gathering darkness to the roars of an All England Club abuzz from his five-set parade of goose bumps with Roger Federer, left Wimbledon 2009 in gathering darkness at an All England Club barren and silent, with throngs still not due until Monday.

“One big problem now is when I am playing, I am thinking more about my knees than the game,” Nadal said at a news conference earlier in the evening.

“So that’s very difficult to play well like this, no?”

For evidence, he mined his exhibition Friday afternoon up in London on the Thames River at the Hurlingham Club, where he lost to No. 18-ranked Stanislas Wawrinka, 4-6, 7-6 (6), 10-3, in a match tiebreaker and reckoned, “Today was my last test; I didn’t feel terrible but not close to my best.”

He mined also the exhibition of Thursday on that same grass court, where he lost, 6-4, 6-3, to former Wimbledon champion Lleyton Hewitt.

As he spent those afternoons looking uncharacteristically several notches below supernatural, he affirmed the jolting inversion that has crashed in since May 17.

What’s happened since could cause whiplash.

Back then, before a final in Madrid against Federer, Nadal had the No. 1 ranking, a widening lead on No. 2 Federer, an apparent mastery of Federer and an upcoming French Open into which he would bring a 28-0 lifetime record as a Godzilla favorite.

Since then, Nadal has lost that Madrid final to Federer, lost in a way that could make a witness have his eyes examined against Robin Soderling in the fourth round in Paris, visited doctors in Barcelona, withdrawn from the Wimbledon tune-up at Queen’s Club in London and withdrawn from Wimbledon.

That four-hour semifinal win over Djokovic in Madrid on May 16? That brute must’ve been even harder than it looked.

Federer, meanwhile, has tumbled to a Parisian court in mirthful tears, kissed the lone Grand Slam trophy he lacked, arrived to extol the beauty of Wimbledon and, if that weren’t enough, zoomed to within breakneck sight of a perch presumed unreachable in 2009.

If he wins Wimbledon for the sixth time in seven years, he’ll arrive at the intersection of lo and behold and reclaim the No. 1 ranking he once held for so long -- 237 weeks, until last August -- that he seemed to hold the mortgage.

“If I lose the No. 1, I’m going to accept it like the four years I was the No. 2,” a roomful of reporters heard Nadal saying.

Somehow, the Australian Open champion, whose win on those hardcourts sent Federer into mirthless tears, is now speaking of an indefinite absence, ensuring listeners it’s “not a chronic problem,” noting he’ll reevaluate his 2009 calendar to check for overscheduling.

“The truth is that a sportsman always plays with pain,” Nadal said in Spanish, through an interpreter.

“You really don’t know where the limit is and really don’t know when you can get to it. I think I reached the limit and think basically I need to reset.”

That left Wimbledon as “one of the toughest decisions of my career,” one that found him “better than what I was feeling a couple of weeks ago,” but still, “I just don’t feel right.”

That left Wimbledon itself with a vacated No. 1 seeding, with a big dose of fear removed from No. 3 Andy Murray’s half of the draw and from No. 6 Andy Roddick’s quarter, with No. 5 Juan Martin Del Potro moved over to Nadal’s slot on the diagram by rule, and without the charismatic sort with the Wimbledon-purple trim on his jacket and his sneakers during his exhibitions.

Even the courtesy cars had vacated the driveway near the purple morning-glories later Friday evening, but Nadal still sat in the players’ lounge on a sofa with Djokovic, chatting for more than an hour.

He’d left the French Open in a setting impossible to believe, hugging everybody farewell on the middle Sunday and not the final one, whooshing away in a black courtesy car to a smattering of cheers from those who managed to notice.

Now the rare Spaniard who daydreamed of Wimbledon and then won it left Wimbledon before it began in a purple T-shirt, having outlasted even the nice tennis family of four from Kentucky who’d waited a good while.

The one fan remained, and Nadal would find the right gate, sign for her, say goodbye to Djokovic and walk up a side street with his two managers toward a rented house that suddenly just might be available at a steep price.

Along this unforeseeable way, he did pass two reporters.

“Ciao,” he said.

chuck.culpepper@yahoo.com

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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

No repeats

WIMBLEDON MEN’S ABSENT DEFENDING CHAMPIONS

1968-present

- John Newcombe

(1971 champion-ITF ban on World Champion Tennis professionals)

- Stan Smith

(1972 champion-ATP boycott)

- Goran Ivanisevic

(2001 champion-injury)

- Rafael Nadal

(2008 champion-injury)