Rafael Nadal wins his 21st Major title

(sda) Rafael Nadal won his 21st Grand Slam title at the Australian Open in Melbourne thanks to an epic five-set win over Russian Daniil Medvedev. The 35-year-old Spaniard overtakes Roger Federer and Novak Djokovic.

What a fight, what drama, what a winner! In a game that was hard to beat for excitement and spectacle, Rafael Nadal crowned himself the most successful player in history at Melbourne’s Rod Laver Arena – in a way that befits the Mallorcan’s career.

Nadal with will power

Marked by the heat and humidity, Nadal, who will be 36 in June, turned a game that had already been thought lost thanks to incredible willpower. After almost five and a half hours of play, the Spaniard scored his first match point with a volley after 1 a.m. local time to make it 2: 6, 6: 7 (5: 7), 6: 4, 6: 4, 7: 5. Previously, he was two points away from victory at 5: 4 and his own serve before conceding another break.

In his sixth final in Melbourne, Nadal won the title for the second time after 2009, when he defeated Roger Federer in five sets in a game that was also high. In 2012 and 2019 against Djokovic, in 2014 against Stan Wawrinka and in 2017 against Federer, the Spaniard lost out in the final. Nadal is only the fourth player to have won each of the four Grand Slam tournaments at least twice.

The fact that Nadal found his way back into the game was not only due to his incredible fighting spirit but also to Medvedev. With a 2-0 lead in the set, the Russian missed three breakballs in a row at the beginning of the third round and thus a possible preliminary decision. After that he kept struggling with his nerves, tangled with the audience a few times and made an unusually large number of wrong decisions. Again and again he threw in stop balls, which were almost always unsuccessful.

Although Medvedev caught himself in the fifth set, he couldn’t turn it around – also because he let go again at 5: 5 and his own serve. He missed the second Grand Slam title after his success at the US Open in September. In Melbourne he had already left the place as a loser a year ago after the final and the defeat against Djokovic. It is therefore clear that Djokovic will remain number 1 in the ATP ranking for the time being. In the event of a victory, the Russian could have replaced the Serbs in mid-February.

A good end that started badly

Thanks to the epic men’s final and Ashleigh Barty’s victory in the women’s tournament, the tournament came to a happy conclusion. The Melbourne Park event, dubbed by many as a “Happy Slam”, was ill-starred for the third year in a row. In 2020, devastating forest fires raged across the country, in 2021 the corona pandemic cast its shadow on the tournament, before this year the unspeakable farce about the entry of defending champion Novak Djokovic, which was ultimately prevented, did not cast a good light on the organizers and Australian politics.