But do you really want one? Rafael Nadal munches on them routinely in between games, and for many athletes they are a wonderfully easy way to ingest a quick boost. The cyclist’s best friend, I used to term them when I competed. Only today Nadal may want to switch to something else in season. Or go for a juice thing.

In his marathon four-setter against 29th seed Paul-Henri Mathieu today at the French Open, Rafael Nadal gulped a quick bite of banana and then went back on court to play. Only to discover that the piece of fruit had lodged in his throat. Not enough to choke the lad, thank God. Nobody had to rush on court and shake him upside down to dislodge it. But it gave him some moments of fairly high anxiety. Hey, Rafa, in addition to not playing with your food, didn’t that good-looking mom of yours tell you to always chew it first?

Nadal nearly bit off more than he could chew in this match, which went nearly five hours against the hometown favorite. The Frenchman Mathieu kept Nadal looking tense and perplexed for a lot of the early half of the match. For a moment there I almost thought the look had a bit of fear to it, as if Rafa himself were not sure if this day would be his. Mathieu combined strong serving with big deep shots off both wings, his play at the net showed good feel and touch. He’s got a pleasant game to look at, with a lot of style. He’s a good-looking tall kid, kind of a roadshow version of Thomas Enqvist.

I have always said I can tolerate the French men. As long as they look like the Swedish ones.

Mathieu probably gave the boys in the players’ lounge a good look into what needs to be done to accost this kid from Majorca. Is it not becoming clear? Roger has shown the way. So did Blake in his win over Nadal at last year’s U.S. Open. Attack attack. Go after him every chance you get, make your chances, take the net when you can and try and finish points off quickly.

One thing perhaps to consider is attacking his first serve as much as you can, because Nadal spins it in at a fantastically high service percentage. In Rome I think it was a 90% first service. That means you see an awful lot of spin to keep it in play, and less speed, and you can get a swing in. It also means that if you don’t really try and do something with the first serve, you have only a small chance of ever seeing a second one.

So grab it while it’s hot. This came up in the TV commentary during the match today, when John McEnroe talked about speaking with Federer in the locker room after the Rome final and saying basically, “Maybe attack his second serve more,” and Roger replied he would have liked to, if he had seen a few of them. Nadal was near perfect in his serving.

In watching this match, I felt that Nadal did not show quite the same intensity he did in the Rome final against Federer. But perhaps that was just a brilliant day of intensity on all fronts that, sorry to say, we may not see every weekend. We may even have to live with one or two clunker matches perhaps along the way here, just because two human beings cannot keep up this pace forever.

Does that mean Nadal was a little “off” there at moments as to expose a weakness? And does his being off like this equal Roger Federer “taking his foot off the gas” in Rome? That is how I put it to my co-writer, Nina Rota, who actually thinks the Fed choked it away. She terms it a choke, simply because a player ranked the way Federer is does not simply make mental mistakes like that. I tend to agree with her now.

We’ll see how the two fare in the run-up into what is, hopefully, another great final. But the pressure is going to be intense going into next week, and it will be interesting to see how they both handle it. For my money, Federer may have had some hiccups, but he still looked cool and in control. Nadal has not quite looked that way, at least not today. Perhaps the pressure will take a toll more on him.

I heard McEnroe rap about them again in the booth today, and I am picking up the vibe from JMc that he thinks Federer is going to win. For a number of reasons. Personally I think Mc just digs his style of play, the movement, the touch, it’s a complete game the way Mc constructed his own. He also feels Roger is practically there already, he knows how to play on clay, he had Rafa on two match points. He played his way to get there. Now he can play his way and figure out how to win. McEnroe pointed out what a good student of the game Roger is, he figures out his opponents. Nalbandian can still bother Roger, but he doesn’t lose to him the way he did a few years ago. Ditto Hewitt and Henman, who also had winning records against Federer early on. Now they can’t buy a point off of him. I would not like to see Nadal slip into that trough of despond. It would be bad for tennis. But a day of reckoning may be coming, and this time Nadal may be the one who comes up short.

And there is another element. Mathieu looked plainly fatigued today, in about the same length of match that the guys had in Rome. Federer did not strike me at all as running out of steam.

In any event, Nadal was not as awesome as he was in Rome. He still won, but I am sensing vulnerability here. He gave Mathieu chances to do things and Mathieu took them. Mathieu is the way most of the tour players could beat Roger: hope that Roger has a slightly off day, for him, and you have an incredibly good day. Only Nadal seems able to play him, at full strength. At least up until now.

It was annoying though to see Mathieu really go into the can on his serve at 4-4 in the fourth and final set, playing really dumb shots and then capping it with a double fault. Nadal then served out the match. It was an unfortunate and costly lapse in an otherwise really well-played match by the young Frenchman.

The final score was 5-7, 6-4, 6-4, 6-4.

Lleyton Hewitt gets a crack at Nadal in the next round. Unfortunately, Hewitt needs more of the attacking style of Mathieu’s play. He doesn’t have quite the range and height and levers; he’s a B version of Nadal, at this point in his career, a grinder who can grind but not up to the high standard that Nadal has set now in the men’s game. Still, I for one am impressed Hewitt has made it this far in the draw. Today he beat a tricky player, Dominik Hrbaty, in straight sets.

Hey, I’m sure some of us were not expecting him to advance this far. A few other people played tennis today too, I’m sure. But this match and the things surrounding it kind of swept me up.

Hingis trampled another poor opponent. I thought I could shower and make coffee and catch it, but it was practically over by then. Could it be? Hhhmmm, this vision is crowding into my head….a Swiss lady….and gentleman? Winning their first French Opens? Atop the podium?

What kind of banana am I eating, anyway?

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