US Open 2013
The ultimate competitor. After lifting the title at Flushing Meadows in 2010, Nadal was left with honey on his lips a year later, when he was defeated in the final against Novak Djokovic. Absent in 2012 due to tendinitis in the knee, he met the Serbian again in the decisive match. It took him 3 hours and 21 minutes to beat the Balkan 6-2, 3-6, 6-4, 6-1. He thus became the third tennis player capable of consecutively winning the Masters 1,000 in Montreal, the Masters 1,000 in Cincinnati and the US Open, something that only the Australian Patrick Rafter and the American Andy Roddick had previously achieved. He showed, in short, that, as Djokovic said, he was “the ultimate competitor.”
