After 3 hours and 22 minutes of intense, stressful and unusually angsty battle with a slam champion in the quarterfinal of the Australian Open, 25 minutes of fighting his own body, and then a further 20 minutes of the sorrowful reflection that surely followed, Rafael Nadal still hadn’t exerted his greatest effort of the day. That time would come for him as he limped into the press room, barely mobile, and was forced to reckon with the steps that led up to the podium of the press conference room. Nadal stared down at his new nemesis, just two steps high, clearly hoping that he could just turn and leave. When he finally mustered the strength to push up from his leg and jump up onto the stairs, he recoiled, his face scrunched into a tight wince and his entire body shuddered.

Athletes represent the physical best of us - the quickest, the strongest, the most coordinated. They achieve with seeming ease either what our regular bodies are simply incapable of or what we can do but on levels infinitely greater. But it usually comes at a cost and it never fails to jar us when those very efforts reduce their range of movement to nothing.

For Rafael Nadal, this bitter price of excellence has been as faithful a companion throughout his career as the trophies that adorn it. At any given moment over the past 15 years, his foot, his knees, his back, his wrist have all conspired to assert themselves on not only his career, making him one of the most injury-prone consistent top players around, but they have been a constant hindrance to his regular mortal endeavors in life.

They have left him unable to participate to do the things he loves in life: to play golf - a sport that for some people solely exists punchline for its complete lack of physical endeavor - he has largely stopped playing football, at times he has literally been incapable of driving due to the stress an action as mundane as pressing down on a pedal exerts on his foot or knees. The sport of tennis has changed Rafael Nadal’s life, but it’s clear that he has had ample time to think about the ways his life will be changed when it’s over.

“Somebody who is running the tour should think little bit about what's going on,” he said afterward. “Too many people getting injured. I don't know if they have to think a little bit about the health of the players. Not for now that we are playing, but there is life after tennis. I don't know if we keep playing in this very, very hard surfaces what's going to happen in the future with our lives.”

That all led to one of the visibly most frustrated press conferences of Nadal’s career. He once admitted that his decision to depart from his kingdom at the French Open in 2016 was one of the toughest moments of his career. After fulfilling his media duties and being continually slashed deeper with every question, he sat in the car and cried all way home. But even in his press conference back then, he erected a mask over his emotions and was able to obscure his pain, donning a brave face in the face of a thousand questions until he was alone.

Today there wasn’t even an attempt. And the emotions that radiated from every word were not the usual sadness or heartbreak – it was anger, frustration, disgust that this was happening yet again. Not only did these things keep on happening, but the salt in his wounds laid in the fact that his entire preparation for the tournament had revolved around racing against the clock to prepare his knee in time for Melbourne. He finally succeeded in doing so, he was moving well, and he was ready to fight for the title. Yet, ultimately, none of it meant a thing. For once, it was clear that he had no time to answer these silly questions. Of course, that doesn’t mean he didn’t still.

“I am a positive person, and I can be positive, but today is an opportunity lost to be in the semifinals of a Grand Slam and fight for an important title for me, no?” said Nadal. “In this tournament already happened a couple of times in my life, so it's really, I don't want to say frustration, but is really tough to accept, especially after a tough December that I had without having a chance to start in Abu Dhabi and then Brisbane.”

Nadal’s continued criticism of the tour certainly does carry some logic. The most physical era of tennis has collided with it being played on the most physically demanding calendar. Even if there isn’t without clear logic, there is certainly something ironic about the fact that the one innovation that the sport is constantly pushing for at the moment, squeezing out the time between points, is the rule that exists so that players can recover. The same general issues with the length of the calendar and all the other characteristics of the tour that enable injuries have been played out for decades. When Andy Roddick held a press conference in Melbourne last year, he shrugged as the subject of injuries came up. “This goes to the schedule, the length of it, it's the same conversation we were having 15 years ago,” Roddick said. “I could have literally not been gone five years and been fluent in this conversation.”

It’s clear that there need to be fewer mandatory events, but at the same time it’s difficult to think that it would make a difference to players’ careers. They will continue to chase the money in a Dubai, Acapulco or wherever benefits them. The pounding of hard surfaces may be the most physically destructive, but it all counts. Would Nadal be willing to give up any of his favored clay court tournaments? Before the tournament, I spoke to Cilic. When I pressed him hard on the question of injuries and what the sport can do to help them, he constantly pushed back, reasserting the need for player accountability. Then, as in his victory against a retired Nadal, he was adamant that players control their own destinies.

“The calendar is there for so many years,” said Cilic. “Just in this last year, obviously beginning of this one, we see a lot of top guys that are injured. In the end, it's on all of us to try to take care of our bodies, to try to pick the right schedule, to listen to our body, how it feels.”

Lost within it all, as injuries do, is the fact that there was a tennis match. It was admittedly an imperfect tennis match with too much tension from Nadal and too many errors from Cilic. As the pressure mounted, Nadal, despite his fight, was an uncharacteristic ball of relative angst and his shot quality lacked, and all the while Cilic embraced his most aggressive instincts even though the errors piled up. Above all, it was a match with the intensity and the tension worthy of two slam champions. When Nadal eked out a tension-riddled third set, it seemed to be headed in the same direction of the many hundreds of matches that Nadal eked out on his mentality and grit alone. But instead, it will go down as yet another a reminder that even the nuclear force of Nadal’s will is no match for the frailty of the, and particularly his, mortal human body.