The winds of fortune in tennis can blow in dramatically differently directions - as U.S. Open champion Rafael Nadal knows only too well.
Sitting atop the tennis world after his 6-4, 5-7, 6-4, 6-2 victory over Novak Djokovic in Monday's final, the 24-year-old from Mallorca need only hark back to 12 months ago, to see how fickle the fates can be.
Then, after a semi-final U.S. Open loss to Juan Martin del Potro while suffering from a three-centimetre abdominal tear, he was in the midst of 13-tournament stretch without a title.
If Roger Federer felt disappointed by failing two convert two match points against Djokovic in last Saturday's semi-finals, Nadal could sympathize after doing likewise at the first event of 2010 in Doha, Qatar, when he lost the final to Nikolay Davydenko 0-6, 6-7 (8), 6-4. That was his 10th tournament in a row without a victory.
How dramatically things turned for him when he got back on the clay in April, going 22-0 in Monte Carlo, Rome, Madrid and at the French Open to take over the No. 1 ranking from Federer.
"For me, the most important tournament of the 2010 year was Roland Garros," he said Saturday. "It gave me a lot of confidence to win Roland Garros because it was very hard to lose there in 2009."
That was his shocker loss as four-time defending champion on his beloved red clay to Robin Soderling.
Avenging that defeat to the Swede in the 2010 final was the springboard for the Wimbledon and U.S. Open victories to follow, a trio of titles that made him the first player since another lefthander, Rod Laver from Australia, in 1969 to accomplish that feat.
But he actually went one better because, in 1969, Wimbledon and the U.S. Open were on grass. So, pulling off the triple today requires wins on three different surfaces - clay in Paris, grass in London and hard courts in New York.
His reward for winning Flushing Meadows, rightly described as the toughest tournament in tennis because of the gruelling playing conditions and all-round aggro of New York City, was a ninth Grand Slam title, and one that enabled him to complete a career Grand Slam.
Nadal's turnaround had everything to do with his health, principally coming to grips with knee problems, including one that forced him to retire in the quarter-finals of the Australian Open in January to Andy Murray.
An injection in his left knee in April, and then more in both knees this summer after Wimbledon, has restored his ability to play, pain-free, the kind of hyper-physical tennis that breaks the spirit of his opponents.
Nadal was on a similar run of success early last year. He had won the French Open, Wimbledon and the Olympics in 2008, and followed up with the Australian Open title in January, before tendinitis in both knees contributed to the loss to Soderling at the French Open and forced him off the tour for two months, preventing him from playing Wimbledon as defending champion.
But he is now back and dominant and a revered figure in his homeland. Conchita Martinez, the Spaniard who won Wimbledon in 1994, said of her compatriot's popularity at home: "Spain this year had some amazing results in many sports, like soccer and the World Cup. I don't know if anyone is bigger than Rafa. For a while it was (Fernando) Alonso. When he was winning in Formula One, he was doing all the commercials. Now, it's Rafa, you see him on TV all the time.
"He's bigger than the King [Juan Carlos I]" claims Spanish player Fernando Vicente, "everybody loves him … kids, old people."
Nadal's odyssey to the U.S. Open title, the only Grand Slam heretofore missing from his record, began back in 2003 with a first-round 6-4, 6-3, 6-3 victory over Vicente at Flushing Meadows.
"He was a kid, 17, and he beat me in three sets," recalled Vicente, 26 at the time. "We played for three hours and I was completely tired and he was perfect. I was thinking, 'This guy is going to be good.'"
Vicente has since gotten to know Nadal by playing on teams with him. "His family is so nice," he said about his countryman, "and they have rules (beliefs) that in life 'today you're going to be the first and, maybe tomorrow, you are the last.'"
Rafael probably doesn't need that guidance any more, he has lived the ups and downs enough to easily understand.