Rafa Nadal surpasses himself once again, and fresh from his 36 years, he scores yet another record in a career for which the adjectives have run out. By beating Casper Ruud in Paris, he wins his 14th Roland Garros and 22nd Grand Slam title as well as being the oldest player ever to win such a prestigious trophy. Rivals Djokovic and Federer are more and more distant, holding 20 titles.
The final on the Philippe Chartrier was little more than training for the Majorcan phenomenon. The unfortunate Ruud, a 23-year-old Norwegian who also offers his best tennis on clay, managed to collect only 6 games, closing the third and final set with a humiliating 0-6. Overall, he won 55 points against Nadal’s 86 and scored just 16 winning strokes against 37.
The tournament was however a great success for him, reaching his first final in a number 8 Grand Slam on the circuit. “We all know what kind of champion you are – said the Norwegian at the end of the match to the Spaniard – Today I understood what it means to face you in the final, it’s not easy and I’m certainly not your first victim”.
Nadal thus raises his second Grand Slam trophy of the year after the resounding victory at the Australian Open in comeback over Medvedev and after months of stop due to injury. He is now in full swing to cross the prestigious Grand Slam finish line, which is to win all 4 major tournaments in the same calendar year, something he has never been able to achieve so far. It will be a question of whether the big problem with his foot that has been dragging on for some time will allow him to take the field at Wimbledon.
Nadal completed the journey towards the fourteenth Parisian slam in as many finals by beating four Top 10s in seven games: Felix Auger-Aliassime (the third player to take him to the fifth set in Paris), Novak Djokovic, Alexander Zverev (who retired for the fall in the final of the second set which cost him the laceration of several ligaments in his right ankle) and precisely Ruud, the first Norwegian finalist ever in a Grand Slam