Is it possible to have too much of a good thing? Shakespeare certainly thought so. In the defining soliloquy of Henry IV Part 1, Prince Hal states: “If all the year were playing holidays, To sport would be as tedious as to work; But, when they seldom come, they wish'd-for come, And nothing pleaseth but rare accidents.” Rafael Nadal had a rare accident on Sunday.

Well, rare does not really do it justice. It was an unprecedented, unexpected, utterly unforeseen accident of the kind that comes around once in a sporting lifetime; a defeat every bit as shocking as Mike Tyson's against James “Buster” Douglas more than 19 years ago when an aura of invincibility was shattered in the moment it took a gloved fist to swivel a previously impenetrable jaw.

Nadal had never lost at Roland Garros; he had won 32 straight matches (he had also won 32 straight sets stretching back to the final with Roger Federer in 2007); and he had done so with an authority and an imperiousness that brooked no dispute. The Coupe Des Mousquetaires seemed as near as damn it to being the personal possession of the conquistadorial Spaniard, with his opponents less pretenders than subjects.

Then Nadal lost. To Robin Söderling (who?). A Swede seeded at No23 in the competition (how low?). A man who had little reputation on clay and even less of a reputation in the minds of tennis fans around the world, even if his status is on an upward trajectory after his demolition of Nikolay Davydenko in yesterday's quarter-final. Many of us did not even bother to tune into the match, fearful that it would not even be a match. A waste of our time. A waste of Nadal's time. A waste of Söderling's time.

A warm-up, at best, for Nadal's next contest.

And then he lost.

Some will take Nadal's defeat as eloquent testimony to sport's infinite capacity to spring surprises, to keep us guessing, to ravish us with its glorious capriciousness. And there is something in that. But Nadal took a different lesson, a subtler lesson, dare I say it, a more philosophical lesson. In his defeat, Nadal told us that he had glimpsed the meaning of victory.

It was a crowded press conference after the match. Neil Harman, the tennis correspondent of The Times (a man who, if you ask me, has one of the most wondrous jobs on the planet), wrote that it was stuffy and airless, the room so full of people and curiosity, so weighed down with disbelief, that it was difficult to breathe. Nadal came in with his boyish face and sculpted biceps and, sensing the tumult, raised an eyebrow.

Then came his quote, one of the more revelatory to emerge from a post-match press conference, occasions that typically incubate soulless banalities: “Defeats never make you grow, but you also realise how difficult what I achieved up until today was, and this is something you need sometimes. You need a defeat to give the value to your victories.”

And it was that last sentiment that penetrated the deepest, many discerning something vaguely Kipling-esque in its powerful simplicity. “You need a defeat to give the value to your victories.”

Nadal almost made it sound like a blessing (the type well disguised); that his success at Roland Garros had endured for so long that victory was beginning to lose its emotional vitality; that his reign in Paris had, to paraphrase Shakespeare, begun to feel like an overlong holiday. How better to remind oneself of the savour of victory than to taste the bitterness of defeat?

Partly, no doubt, the sentiment was expressed by Nadal to help him to come to terms with the shock and disappointment of his loss; it was, in essence, the kind of post-match rationalisation that sportsmen often indulge in when walking out of the exit door. They spend their lives striving for victory, punishing their bodies and minds in pursuit of fame and glory and then, when they lose, they tell us it did not matter all that much after all.

Nadal was at it again in his blog on Monday, evoking Boris Becker's famous line (used after the German's defeat in the second round at Wimbledon in 1987: “I lost a game of tennis. Nobody died”) when he wrote: “The first thing I want to say is that it was only a tennis match yesterday. No big drama. It happens, and I knew it would happen one day. It had to be yesterday and well, now I just have to look at that match and see what I did wrong. It is not a tragedy.”

We all use these little psychological ruses as we make our way through the world; creating mini-narratives to help us through local difficulties, grand narratives that help us to make sense of it all. I, too, often dwelled on the triviality of sport in the moments after I had lost a precious contest, but it was not the kind of speculation you would have often found me indulging in when swilling champagne after one of my (sadly rare) triumphs.

But Nadal's idea that defeat gives value to victories does not simply express a consolation, but a truth that is far deeper. A truth rooted in the mind. A truth with which we are all familiar.

The first time I had an article published in The Times I sprinted down to the local newsagent and marvelled at the black-and-white reality of my byline. I walked around my neighbourhood in Richmond with the paper under my arm showing anybody who cared to look. The Times! Me! Can you believe it? Isn't it wonderful?

Over the years, that excitement gave way to a frisson, then to a mere echo of a frisson and now seeing my byline has become part of the fabric of my life. I will miss it desperately when, for whatever reason, I stop writing, but its continuation is no longer capable of elevating my soul and electrifying my spirit. Not in the way it used to. That is not to “diss” The Times but merely to state a law of psychology.

None of this is to dispute that Nadal would have enjoyed victory at this year's French Open. He would have felt a palpable sense of elation and marvelled at how his name was being writ ever larger into the iconography of the game he so dearly loves. But would it have compared to the virginal emotions of his first victory, or even his second or third? Would it mean quite as much if he were defending his title for the tenth or fifteenth time?

Defeat is a precious gift to the all-conquering sportsman: an opportunity to learn, to adapt, to develop. But ultimately it is an opportunity to rediscover the essential meaning of victory. That is why Nadal will return stronger, deeper and hungrier.

Nothing pleaseth but rare accidents.

Sport is so often about taking unexpected opportunities, something that will vex Andy Murray as he comes to terms with yesterday's defeat by Fernando González. The Chilean played well, his forehand producing thunderbolts from the back of the court, particularly when running around to play it from the backhand side, but it was a match that a peak-form Murray would have won. And, deep down, the Scot knows it.