The Spaniard achieves Roland Garros number fourteen against Casper Ruud and distances himself even further from Djokovic and Federer
On June 5, 2005, Rafael Nadal won his first Grand Slam, his first Roland Garros, against Mariano Puerta. 17 years later, little has changed. He no longer wears the cut-out sleeves, nor the usual pirate pants in his youth. Now he is a 36-year-old man with all the history of tennis behind him. A tennis player who has defied logic, medicine and his own sport to break a record that was impossible to beat every year.
It was unprecedented for someone to win nine titles in the same Grand Slam. And ten. And eleven. And twelve. and thirteen. And it will be at fourteen, until he makes fifteen himself. And if he can’t, it’s insurmountable anyway, because Nadal and Roland Garros is the most beautiful story in tennis, the best romance ever written. The one without end and who lived another chapter on June 5, 17 years after the first, when Nadal defeated Casper Ruud (6-3, 6-3 and 6-0) and won the fourteenth title in Paris and the twentieth second Grand Slam overalls.
The Manacor man has further advantage over Novak Djokovic and Roger Federer, who remain at 20, two away from Nadal, and also become the longest-lived tennis player to win the title in Paris, surpassing Andrés Gimeno’s figure, which he won in 1972. at the age of 34 years and ten months.
His first bite of the trophy came minutes before the two contenders even took to the track. While the audience warmed up, Ruud and Nadal waited in the locker room tunnel. The Norwegian, stunned by the situation, adjusted his clothes, making the final touches before all the cameras confronted him with the task no one in history has accomplished: to win a final against Nadal at Roland Garros. The Balearic was already a locomotive. Up and down the hall, making jumps, sprinting. The Norwegian’s look was the same expression of terror as that of a fan in an arena who sees the animal released.
And any hope the Norwegian had that this was just a facade vanished once the match started. Nadal, with one eye to the sky, faced with the threat of a rain that never came, exposed his tennis flow against a Ruud who was pressed against the back of the court and constantly punished his backhand, his weakest shot.
The Spaniard, perfect in tactics, pushed him to that blow, barely letting him join right where the Oslo man is more skilled. Games started to drop and Ruud only got hooked again after a game by Nadal with two double faults and two other gross errors.
But on clay, the breaks are normal and Nadal didn’t mislead them, neither the break he took in the first set, which ended with a convincing 6-3, nor the one that left him 1-3 behind in the second. Ruud, with service for 1-4, saw what has almost never happened in history. Nadal lost just seven sets in the thirteen finals he played in Paris. And the eighth didn’t even come with Ruud’s advantage.
Nadal won the next five games, took the second set 6-3 and did not lose a single game. The third set was proof that if Ruud had any chance of winning this match it was far more than that, that beating Nadal at Roland Garros belongs to very few – only two in history, in fact – and that this Sunday’s story was about the Spaniard’s fourteenth title, not his first. “I am only one victim, many others have suffered what I have had before,” admitted Ruud.
Backhanded to the line, Nadal certified his third ‘donut’ in a Roland Garros final, after the one he hit Federer in 2008 and the one he beat Djokovic in 2020, adding another title to the best record in the Great in the history of this sport. 14 Roland Garros, 2 Wimbledon, 2 Australian Opens and 4 US Opens. With 22 Majors, she not only distances herself from Federer and Djokovic, she also matches Steffi Graf’s 22 titles and is one behind Serena Williams, who has 23, and two behind Margaret Court, who added 24.
The record of the best athlete in the history of Spain, of this sport and in the Olympus of sport in general. At the age of 36 and 20 days ago, he left Rome with a limp. Raphael is incredible.
Source: La Verdad
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