When Grand Slam title No. 21 belonged to him, when the Australian Open final was over after 5 hours, 24 minutes of twists and turns and he somehow completed a comeback from two sets down, Rafael Nadal dropped his racket to the court, covered his face with his taped-up fingers, then shook his head and smiled.
Just unforgettable, is how he described his 2-6, 6-7 (5), 6-4, 6-4, 7-5 victory over Daniil Medvedev, a result that seemed particularly unlikely when Nadal faced three break points midway through the third set.
Tapping his heart with his right hand, Nadal added: One of the most emotional matches of my tennis career, without a doubt. Means a lot to me.
This was, in various respects, a fitting way for Nadal to set himself apart, at least for the moment, from Roger Federer and Novak Djokovic: coming off a hiatus forced by a painful left foot, doubting his health and his form, worried about his future in tennis and, to cap it all off, climbing out of a huge hole the match began Sunday night and concluded in the wee hours of Monday with unrelenting play backed by unrelenting belief.
The last man to win an Australian Open final after dropping the first two sets was Roy Emerson, 57 years ago.
Nadal, a 35-year-old from Spain, is the first member of the Big Three and, of course, the first man in the history of tennis to surpass 20 major singles championships. His rivals each got a chance to do so first: Federer lost to Djokovic in the 2019 Wimbledon final; Djokovic lost to Medvedev in the 2021 U.S. Open final.
It is the first time he’s ever had more Grand Slam trophies than Federer, who is 40 and sat out the Australian Open while recovering from the latest in a series of knee operations. The No. 1-ranked Djokovic, who is 34, also missed the hard-court tournament he has won a record nine times; he is not vaccinated against COVID-19 and was deported after an 11-day legal saga that began when his visa was canceled upon arrival in Australia.—AFP
