It has been 16 years since Rafael Nadal won his first major tournament, Australian Open 2022: Novak Djokovic case, live: Australia continues to extend the decision on the deportation of the Serbian”>Roland Garros in 2005. Since then nothing was written in his life as an elite athlete, but it has been himself, his team, his conviction and his iron will who have been building years This year an extraordinary player, gifted like no other for sacrifice, endurance and faith in himself.
At 35 years old, Nadal has become the tennis player who has won the most Grand Slam titles, 21 in total, after winning the Australian Open for the second time this Sunday. The Spanish tennis player defeated Russian Daniil Medvedev, 10 years younger, in a literally heart-stopping final in five sets 2-6, 6-7, 6-4, 6-4, 7-5. The match lasted five hours and 24 minutes: it was the second longest of his career, 29 minutes short of the one he played in 2012 against Novak Djokovic, also in Australia, but then he lost.
The Spaniard completed a match that is worth as a compendium of a career presided over by his capacity for sacrifice, competitive character, mentality of resistance and the laborious gift of constant improvement that has kept him at the top of the sport with unflappable continuity. Only Emerson in 1965 — more than 50 years ago — had come back from a match after losing the first two sets in an Australian Open final. Nadal has surpassed two giants of the sport, Djokovic and Roger Federer, in the number of Grand Slams won.
No one knows how to measure the quality of extraordinary athletes against extraordinary achievements, but the number of titles, the quality of the rivals and the dramatic nature of yesterday’s final in Australia elevate Nadal to place him among the absolute elite of world sports. all the times. Along with Djokovic, he is the only tennis player who has conquered each of the big four (Roland Garros, Wimbledon, United States and Australia) on more than one occasion, after his victory yesterday for the second time, 13 years after his first victory in 2009. The 21st century has added great tennis figures to the lists of champions (such as Serena Williams or Steffi Graf, with 23 and 22 Grand Slams each), but this century seems tailor-made for Nadal, for his humility , of his moral elegance and his knowing how to win, even more difficult than knowing how to lose. Nadal has achieved such a unique record with a match that started poorly, went off the rails in his middle zone and exploded into a smash finish that kept the crowd both on edge and ecstatic when the fifth set came around, and Nadal won it. In Australia it had only happened twice before. Rafa Nadal himself did it in 2009, but yesterday it was something else: the ratification of an exceptional champion when things go well and when things go wrong.
