In an epic final that will be part of tennis history, the Spaniard Rafael Nadal overcame the loss of the first two sets against the Russian Daniil Medvedev to win the Open Australia, 2-6, 6-7(5), 6-4, 6-4 and 7-5, and become the first player in history to win 21 Grand Slam titles.
“It has been one of the most emotional feats of my career. It’s unbelievable, a month and a half ago I didn’t know if I was going to play tennis again and now I’m here with this trophy.”, commented at the end of the meeting, which lasted 5 hours and 24 minutes.
The Spaniard completed one of the most unlikely feats in the history of sport, after reaching the Aussie major after 6 months without competing due to injury and beating the favorite in the final in 5 sets. Daniil Medvedev, and in this way overcome the barrier of the 20 greats shared with the Swiss Roger Federer and the Serbian Novak Djokovic.
He overcame both the devastating start of the Muscovite, and the psychological stumble of losing a second set in which he wasted a favorable 5-3, to end up rediscovering himself with brilliant tennis that broke Medvedev in the fifth set.
Nadal became the first player to come back from two sets down in the Australian Open final since local Roy Emerson in 1965.
Nadal became the fourth person with the highest number of Grand Slam titles in a list led by the Australian Margaret Court with 24, the American Serena Williams with 23 and the German Steffi Graf with 22.
He was also confirmed as the second Open Era player, behind Serbian Djokovic, to win each of the major championships twice. The feat of the Spanish overshadowed the loss of a Djokovic who did not play the competition after the Australian Government canceled his visa for the second time, for being considered a threat to the anti-vaccine community of the oceanic country.
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