Things have gone surprisingly smooth for RafaelNadal, but can he pull away from Federer and Djokovic? jon_wertheim and chrisjalmeida preview the AustralianOpen men's final
Rafael Nadal will be playing for a record 21st Grand Slam men's singles final Sunday in Melbourne.. It's across a passageway from his uncle's home and where he's constructing his family home.
And a few months ago, he gave serious thought to the idea that he might become a full-time resident. He had a stubborn foot injury that not only was slow to heal, but was also causing him more pain and discomfort than any other injury he had in his career, which is saying something. Even when he got on the plane to come to Australia four weeks ago, even through a bout of COVID-19 earlier in December, it was unclear whether he'd be able to play in this tournament and how well he would do.
He's really hard to beat in best-of-five sets, as we saw against Shapovalov—even when he had heatstroke, he still figured out a way to come back. But longer matches give him more margin. You can get hot for an hour and you're still not going to beat him. And, you know, it'd be naive not to think he benefited from not having Djokovic in the draw—Nadal hasn’t beaten him in years on a hard court.
In a lot of ways, it has broken very well for him, and for someone who six weeks ago didn't know whether he could play, he's not just these three sets away from winning his 21st major, but he also just seems like he’s in a really, really good place.In the final, he faces Medvedev, who just came off winning his first major at the 2021 US Open. Of all the younger players, he’s the most imposing; the guy who seems least likely to crack under the pressure.
The last time they played, it was so close and now Nadal is two years older and Medvedev is two years more experienced.
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