PARIS — He fooled us once more, which is, in itself, fairly a feat at this stage of the sport.
Maybe Rafael Nadal actually means it when he talks down his possibilities at Roland Garros, and there was actually no fakery concerned final month when he limped and grimaced by the ultimate set of an early-round defeat on the Italian Open and seemed notably weary of the grind and the continual ache in his left foot.
Nadal did certainly discover himself in unfamiliar territory as he returned to his favourite stomping floor of Roland Garros. He was very quick on clay-court matches and with none European clay-court titles this season because the match started.
However there isn’t a tonic fairly like Parisian crimson clay for Nadal. And on Sunday, after working his method by a loaded high half of the draw, he was a lot an excessive amount of, even at lower than his finest, for the No. 8 seed Casper Ruud within the French Open males’s closing, profitable 6-3, 6-3, 6-0 in a match that lasted 2 hours and 18 minutes.
The victory secured Nadal his 14th males’s singles title on the match, extending a French Open file that appears extra unbeatable with each passing spring.
He additionally prolonged his lead within the three-way majors race with Novak Djokovic and Roger Federer. Nadal now has a males’s file 22 Grand Slam singles titles, two greater than Djokovic, whom Nadal beat within the quarterfinals right here, and Federer, who at age 40 remains to be recovering from his newest knee surgical procedure.
Sunday’s triumph, with Billie Jean King and King Felipe VI of Spain in attendance, additionally made Nadal, at 36, the oldest man to win the French Open, surpassing his compatriot Andrés Gimeno, who gained the title in 1972 at age 34.
So many information. A lot enduring excellence, and Ruud, an affable 23-year-old Norwegian, actually wanted no reminder of his opponent’s achievements as he walked into the Philippe Chatrier Courtroom as the primary Norwegian man to play in a Grand Slam singles closing.
Ruud, who broke into the highest 10 final yr, has had two important position fashions as he emerged from a nation higher identified for excelling on snow than on clay. There was his father, Christian, who coached him and was tour-level participant ranked as excessive as No. 39 in 1995. And there was Nadal, together with his excessive topspin forehand and hard-wired combativeness.
He started coaching usually together with his crew at Nadal’s tennis academy in Majorca, Spain, in 2018 and even performed — and misplaced — apply units in opposition to Nadal.
He additionally has performed golf with Nadal, pondering he was in for a relaxed expertise solely to find that Nadal’s aggressive streak was not restricted to the tennis court docket.
However Sunday was Ruud’s first probability to face Nadal on tour.
“To play Rafa in a Roland Garros closing might be the best problem there may be on this sport,” Ruud stated.
And that was earlier than the ultimate. He certainly has not modified his thoughts now.
