- Rafael Nadal wins the Australian Open and has 21 Grand Slam victories under his belt, which is the sole record.
- He previously shared the record with Roger Federer and Novak Djokovic, who each have 20 major titles.
- In the final in Melbourne he turned a 0:2 set deficit against Daniil Medvedev and won in 5:24 hours 2:6, 6:7 (5:7), 6:4, 6:4, 7:5.
Rafael Nadal has reached another milestone in his career at the age of 35. For the first time he can call himself the sole record holder in terms of the number of titles in majors. After the 5-set win over Daniil Medvedev in the final of the Australian Open, the Spaniard has 21 full successes. He puts Roger Federer and Novak Djokovic (20 each) in their place. In Melbourne it is his second triumph after 2009. This makes him only the fourth player to win every Grand Slam tournament at least twice.
Spectacle in the deciding set
However, a huge amount of work was necessary to set the record, the game lasted almost five and a half hours. The 5th movement alone was a nerve-wracking thriller. Nadal, who had the momentum on his side at this point, took the serve from Medvedev to make it 3: 2 with a forehand winner longline worth seeing. He immediately fended off 3 break opportunities from Medvedev.
Even after this new setback, the Russian didn’t give up. When Nadal served to win the tournament, he hit back and equalized to make it 5-5. That’s not all the spectacle: in the very next game, Nadal used the third break chance, which meant he was only one game away from winning. He didn’t let this chance pass him by. He finished the last game of the tournament with a clean sheet.
Over 2 hours lead time for Nadal
After more than an hour, nothing indicated a Nadal success: Set 1 was pure dominance by Medvedev. He broke his opponent to 3: 2 and 5: 2 to zero because Nadal’s first serve didn’t work often enough and was too harmless at the same time. While the Russian committed only 5 unforced errors, the Spaniard’s value in this statistic was more than 3 times (16). You can’t win a flowerpot like that in a Grand Slam final, Nadal knew that too.
In the second round, he showed himself to be better: he managed the service breakthrough to make it 3-1 and then the first service game to zero. The form curve pointed upwards, suddenly Nadal was there. But there was a back and forth. Medvedev took the wind out of the sails of the 35-year-old with the break to 3: 4. Nadal immediately broke back before his 25-year-old opponent was able to put everything back in line in a quarter-hour service game from “Rafa”. In the tie-break, Medvedev finally secured the second, 84-minute set with a backhand pass ball.
The turn
Only in the third round was Nadal able to turn his high form into something countable. In the sixth game he fended off 3 breakballs, in the ninth game he broke himself with a backhand winner. That should be enough for the sentence. The key to winning the set was reducing unforced errors to 8 (from 16 and 20). The first serve also worked a lot better now.
The Mallorquin won round 4 thanks to 21 winners. After a break each, Nadal made the difference in game five, in which he used the seventh opportunity to break service. Medvedev had his thigh massaged before and after, whether this had an impact on his game or not remains his secret. In any case, the momentum had tipped over to Nadal’s side. As is well known, this should remain so until the end.