Fernando Verdasco sprinted toward the drop shot, slid on the concrete and barely got to the ball - then whipped it around the net post and back inside the sideline.
For a clean winner. On match point. In a fifth-set tiebreaker.
What a way to celebrate ''Spain Day'' at the U.S. Open.
One of the best matches of the tournament ended with arguably the best shot of the tournament - Verdasco's winner in a 5-7, 6-7 (8), 6-3, 6-3, 7-6 (4) victory over No. 10 David Ferrer in the first of two all-Spanish matchups Tuesday night at Flushing Meadows.
The match lasted 4 hours, 23 minutes and showcased the country's tennis at its best.
No. 8 Verdasco trailed 4-2 in the fifth set and 4-1 in that tiebreaker before rallying for only his second career victory when trailing by two sets.
''It's tough to explain,'' Verdasco said when asked about his closing shot. ''You are just, you are with your sixth sense, in the ball, in the point, knowing how important it is, and, just trying to run, fight.''
For his efforts, Verdasco will play No. 1 Rafael Nadal in the first all-Spanish quarterfinal in U.S. Open history. Nadal beat fellow Spaniard, No. 23 Feliciano Lopez, 6-3, 6-4, 6-4, in a match that ended at 1:16 a.m. Nadal-Verdasco will be a rematch of their five-set Australian Open semifinal from 2009 - another all-Spanish classic.
''He's a very accomplished player,'' Nadal said. ''He has all the shots. He's a very, very good player. He had an amazing comeback today against another friend. I'll have to play my best tennis if I want to win.''
That Nadal, the top-ranked player in the world, is getting pushed by players in his own country hasn't escaped notice this week, where the Americans are struggling. For the second straight year, no U.S. man made it to the quarterfinals at the U.S. Open.
''Clearly, Rafa and Fernando Verdasco are Spain's best athletes,'' said American Mardy Fish after he was bounced Monday. ''Obviously, soccer is their biggest sport, but tennis is right there. I mean, Rafael Nadal is arguably the biggest sporting athlete they've ever had.''
All this, including the soccer part, is connected, according to one widely held theory.
It's the classic case of success breeding success, which brings more notice to the country and, thus, compels everyone from the government to individual parents to spend more time and money on all sports. The specific uptick in Spanish tennis, meanwhile, might date to the leadup to the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona, when upgrading facilities for a relatively new sport to the Olympic program took priority.
Then came Rafa.
Much as Arnold Palmer did for golf in America in the 1960s, Nadal's emergence in Spain has helped bring what was once viewed as an elite sport to the masses. More courts have been built and court time that used to be prohibitively expensive now comes more cheaply. More teachers are being trained and more players being lured. Young, elite athletes see there's a route to success that used to be reserved mostly for soccer.
''They have a lot of courts. They have a lot of good facilities to practice well,'' said Russian Mikhail Youzhny, who defeated Spaniard Tommy Robredo earlier on Tuesday. ''I think it's not really expensive to practice in Spain for Spanish people. In Russia now it's much expensive to practice in Moscow. Not everybody can do this.''
More kids practicing gradually leads to a larger pool of elite teenagers, which in turn produces pros.
Verdasco and Ferrer are two of Spain's best - and they put on a memorable show.
Verdasco's final winner put him almost on top of Ferrer's sideline chair. The winner stood up and the two shared a long embrace. Verdasco went out to the middle of the court and dropped to his knees. Ferrer hurried off the court.
''It really hurts,'' he said, ''but there have been others.''
Watching this Spanish show with interest are player-development officials in the United States, where much has been made this summer of the slump the country is going through. Spain's six players in the round of 16 tied the most for a foreign country since the Open era began in 1968. The U.S. tennis program, meanwhile, made its biggest headlines earlier this year when Andy Roddick briefly dropped from the top 10, leaving no U.S. man in the top 10 for the first time since the rankings began in 1973.
Is it a coincidence that one of the key architects of the U.S. Tennis Association's development program is Jose Higueras, a Spaniard?
Higueras is pushing a concept called ''shot tolerance'' that has become popular in Spain. Basically, it's teaching young players to find a middle ground between being too aggressive and too passive, something easier to learn in regions where kids grow up playing on slow clay surfaces.
''They're taught it at the beginning,'' Higueras said. ''I mean, for them, accountability about missing is very, very important. And it also comes with the surface that you grow up with. If you grow up on hard courts, on a fast surface, missing becomes a lot more normal because the courts are faster and you don't have much chance to get set up. While on clay, the misses are normally not as acceptable.''
But as this week - and the last few years - have illustrated, it's not just success on clay that pushes the Spaniards. Of Nadal's eight Grand Slam titles, two have come on the slick grass at Wimbledon and one in Australia, where the hard courts are faster than clay, though not as fast as the surface at Flushing Meadows. He still needs a U.S. Open title to complete the career Grand Slam.
Of course, if Nadal doesn't get it done this year, there are plenty of other candidates.
''In many ways, I think Spain has a lot of tennis players who play, people practicing, who like to play tennis,'' Robredo said. ''But that doesn't help us win matches. Out of the million people playing, you have to be good to be at the top level, so, we're happy because we're the ones who've done it.''
