Australian Open, Nadal now runs for the record: “But I feared for my career”

The last Grand Slam played brings with it a bitter memory. That of the defeat in the semifinals in “his” Roland Garros at the hands of a Novak Djokovic launched towards the Grand Slam. Since then, Rafa Nadal had just played a game at Washington’s toreno, on the fast, but his left foot, battered since 2005 by the Muller Weiss syndrome that slowly gnaws at his metatarsus, had stopped him again. An invasive treatment at the end of August had also made him fear the worst: “Who knows if I’ll come back to play, I have to take all the time I need”.

The return

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And instead Rafa is back, and as if he is back. Grinding effort on the pitch and in the gym, until the announcement of his return in mid-December, in the classic millionaire performance in Abu Dhabi. Two defeats and a nice souvenir from the emirate: the positivity at Covid. Infected, like his coach Moyà, despite the double dose of vaccine: “I had symptoms strong enough for three or four days. Pain everywhere, high fever”. Time to get back on his feet and he flew to Melbourne to play the ATP 250 in preparation for the Australian Open, the only Grand Slam he has won only once in his career. As an appetizer, he took the trophy home, doubting whether he was very competitive: “We’ll see how my body reacts – he said – match after match”. And match after match he reached the final, overcoming Berrettini and getting excited to the point of bursting into tears after the battle.

“I can’t say that from my personal life point of view I’ve been through a bad time. We live in a pandemic that is killing people all over the world and so I’m lucky. My six months away wasn’t hard at all. from this point of view. If we only look at tennis, of course, I had big problems, I didn’t even know if I would ever play again. ” Instead, against Matteo Berrettini he really seemed like a boy on the hunt for first successes.

The arrow

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Rafa has set the arrow, on Sunday he could become the first man to win 21 Grand Slam titles by beating Roger Federer and Novak Djokovic. Seeing this Rafa, one can imagine that the goal is to reach 22 with 14 titles at Roland Garros: “I didn’t think I was in this position, long ago I was able to train sometimes 15, sometimes minutes, sometimes 1 hour . I’m super happy to be able to play this chance. I don’t want to say that I deserve it, because many of us deserve it, but I sure worked really hard for it. ”