Happy 92nd

If Rafael Nadal is able to win his next two matches at Wimbledon, he will accomplish two things.

First, he will be three-quarters of the way to winning the Grand Slam, as he's already won the Australian and French Opens. Second, he will vault himself into the conservation as one of the absolute greatest athletes TigerBlog has ever seen. 

If he can bounce back on two days from the physical toll that his quarterfinal win over American Taylor Fritz, which took five sets and more than four hours, and do so against the massive challenges that he faces if he gets to the finish line Sunday.

Just watching Nadal play in that match was impressive enough. At the age of 36. he powered through everything Hicks brought, which was a lot. He did that while battling an abdominal injury that forced him to get treatment during the second set.

His performance was almost superhuman. What does he have left for today's match against Australian Nick Kyrgios — nine years younger and winner in straight sets in his quarterfinal — and then for the winner of the other semifinal between Novak Djokovic and Cameron Norrie of Great Britain, which makes him the crowd favorite? 

TB is fascinated by how well Nadal and Djokovic do when they get behind by a set or two and how they have such a mental edge against players much younger as the matches make it into the fifth set. There was no point of the first-to-10 fifth-set tiebreaker between Nadal and Fritz where TB thought Fritz would win, just because of how hard it is to win the most important points. 

Djokovic did the same thing in his quarterfinal, coming from down two sets to none to win, also against a much younger opponent. Just as with Nadal, the longer the match went, the better the chances for the veteran. If Nadal loses today, it'll be in straight sets, is TB's prediction.

Speaking of Spaniards and tennis, Sunday marks the 92nd birthday of Pete Carril, a longtime tennis player in his own right. And one of his best quotes ever, maybe his best (and that's saying a lot), is this:

"What good is being Spanish if you can't chase after windmills."

Does TB really need to point out that Carril was the men's basketball coach at Princeton for 29 years? It's astonishing to TB that there's almost nobody left at Princeton who worked here when Carril retired in 1996 (though Mitch Henderson, the current head coach, was a player on Carril's last team).

It's even more astonishing to TB that he is older now than Carril was the first time he wrote about him. That's just insane.

Carril won 514 games as the Princeton head coach, with 13 Ivy titles, 11 NCAA appearances, the 1975 NIT title and some of the greatest moments the NCAA tournament has seen, with the 50-49 loss to No. 1 Georgetown in 1989 and the 43-41 win over UCLA in 1996, shortly after Princeton defeated Penn in the Ivy playoff on the night Carril announced his retirement.

It was two years after he retired that Carril was inducted into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame, joining Bill Bradley as Princeton's representatives in Springfield.

Carril grew up in Bethlehem, Pa., the son of a Spanish immigrant who worked in the steel mills for 40 years. He played college basketball at Lafayette, where his coach in his senior year of 1952 was Butch van Breda Kolff, the man he replaced in 1967 as the Tiger head coach.

Among those who have been part of his orbit are Gary Walters, who played for Carril when he coached at Reading High and then was an assistant under Carril before becoming the last athletic director at Princeton Carril worked for, and future coaches Bill Carmody, John Thompson III, Joe Scott, Sydney Johnson, Mike Brennan, Brian Earl, Chris Mooney, Armond Hill, Craig Robinson, Howard Levy and now Henderson.

Carril became more than just a basketball coach, though. Almost all conversations with Carril have  resulted in a better understanding of the deeper meanings of people, sports and their intersection. If TB had to describe him, he'd say he's more of a sociologist than anything else.

And now he's 92. 

To those who played for him, worked with him or watched his teams play, Pete Carril remains as legendary a figure as Princeton Athletics has ever had, in any capacity. To those who didn't, you'll have to take TB's word for it. 

Happy birthday to the legend.