Rafael Nadal went where no male tennis player has gone before as he won a record-breaking 21st Major title by defeating Russian second seed Daniil Medvedev in an epic Australian Open men’s singles final on Sunday.
The 35-year-old surpassed Roger Federer and Novak Djokovic with his 2-6, 6-7 (5/7), 6-4, 6-4, 7-5 victory over a 5 hour 24 minute marathon to top the list of men’s major winners.
It was his second Australian Open title clinched after a sensational, heart-stopping match.
From two sets down and facing three break points on his serve in the third set, Nadal mounted a stunning fightback. He won the fourth set 6-4 to take the championship match into a decider just one minute short of midnight in Melbourne.
Australian Open men’s singles final as it happened
In the fifth, Nadal broke early. And when he went to serve for the match, he had a 30-0 lead which evaporated in no time in a game that he double faulted. Medvedev, of course, fought back to make it 5-5. In what was another epic game, Nadal broke Medvedev once again in the 11th game of the set to go up 6-5 and serve for the match a second time. With his third ace of the night, he went on to have three championship points and converted the first.
This was Nadal’s second Australian Open title, the first came all the way back in 2009. At a tournament where he has endured quite a few heartbreaks since, he registered perhaps his most stunning win yet as not long back he had contemplated bidding goodbye to the sport due to a persistent problem with his foot.
The Spanish sixth seed kept his hopes alive by grinding down an increasingly agitated Medvedev, breaking two times to the Russian’s one.
Medvedev, who was bidding for a second major after his US Open title last year, won the opening two sets 6-2, 7-6 (7/5) before Nadal clinched the third 6-4. In the 4th set, seven break points and a 10-minute game later, Nadal broke Medvedev to lead 3-2 before eventually taking it all the way.
The second set was marred when a protester holding a banner highlighting refugee detention jumped on to the court mid-game when Nadal was serving for the set at 5-3 before being quickly dragged away by security officials.
In 2021, Djokovic missed his chance to go to 21 when he lost in the final against Medvedev. And in 202, he missed out on a chance to improve on his nine Australian Open wins when he was deported over vaccination issues on the eve of the tournament, while Federer remains out injured.
And in the end of an epic fortnight, it was one of the 35-year-old Spanish warrior’s greatest title victories in his 29th Grand Slam final winning his second Australian Open, 13 years after his first in 2009.
Medvedev lost his second consecutive Australian Open final after falling in straight sets to Djokovic in last year’s final.
Nadal now leads Medvedev 4-1, with the Russian also losing to the Spanish lefty in his first major final at the 2019 US Open over five sets.
Nadal also became only the fourth man to win each of the four Grand Slams twice (along with Djokovic, Rod Laver, Roy Emerson) and the third oldest man in the Open Era to win a Grand Slam title, behind Ken Rosewall and Federer.
It crowned an extraordinary effort from Nadal at the year’s opening major, having to modify his game to compensate for a degenerative bone disease in his left foot that ended his 2021 season last August.
He then caught Covid in December which, he said, made him “very sick”.
As the commentator put it after the match was done, it was indeed the miracle in Melbourne.
With AFP inputs
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