The UAE News web report: The Spanish tennis star Rafael Nadal won his 21st grand slam title – Australian Open – one more than his rivals Roger Federer and Novak Djokovic.
Nadal’s five-hour-and-24-minute triumph, after being down by two sets, thrilled a raucous crowd on a warm Sunday night at Rod Laver Arena. It came just a day after Ashleigh Barty of Australia won the women’s singles title – the first win in 44 years at home ground.
Two weeks ago, just hours before the first matches, Australian authorities deported Djokovic, a perennial favorite in the tournament and Nadal’s longtime rival, for entering the country without being vaccinated against the coronavirus.
“This has been one of the most emotional nights of my tennis career,” Nadal told the cheering crowd, and later said: “If we put everything together, the scenario, the momentum, what it means. Yeah, without a doubt probably have been the biggest comeback of my tennis career.”
Nadal, 35, returned from a chronic foot injury that had him considering retirement late last year and then came back on Sunday in a match he trailed by two sets to win, 2-6, 6-7 (5), 6-4, 6-4, 7-5.
Though Nadal sprinted to the players’ box to embrace his father, Sebastián, he struggled to walk in the aftermath of his victory, collapsing to the floor of the players’ gymnasium and hobbling up the steps to give a postmatch news conference that began at 2:42 a.m. on Monday in Melbourne.
“I was not ready physically for these kind of battles, honestly,” Nadal said. “I am super, super tired in all ways. I even can’t celebrate. But it was the day to give everything, no? I enjoyed it. I enjoyed the fight. I enjoyed the emotions. At the end to have this trophy with me means everything.”
The trophy also meant a lot to Barty. On the 100th anniversary of the first women’s event at the Open, Barty’s match drew huge local television audiences on Saturday as she became the first Australian to win the singles title since Chris O’Neil in 1978, striking a chord on the court as she embraced the former champion Evonne Goolagong Cawley, who, like Barty, is of Indigenous Australian heritage, and who has become a friend and mentor.
