With a smile from ear to ear, for the happiness produced by a mixture of good feelings, desire to play and the adrenaline of the almost forgotten applause of the public, Rafa Nadal warned that for him 2021 “is a special year” and that he will try to “do his best to win again” in Australia like he did 12 seasons ago now. “Probably no one here will remember anymore,” he joked in the interview on the pitch after beating Dominic Thiem in the A Day at the Drive exhibition, held in Adelaide, where neither of them had played before. “I'll keep trying hard.”
“The last two weeks have been phenomenal, honestly, although 14 days in quarantine is not ideal. But it is the way we need to do things today and we cannot thank South Australia and Tennis Australia enough what they have done for us, “said the world number two.
Then they asked him about his youthful appearance and he came out gracefully from the question. “You are not in my body,” he told the interviewer. “I don't get better, I think, I prefer not to answer that, but maybe the passion I feel for the sport has something to do with it. I still enjoy it and I never dreamed that I would be where I am at 34 years old. If you had told me 10 years ago I would have told you that you will forget it. “
Nadal praising the way Australia has handled the coronavirus pandemic and I hope that games like this Friday, with a large audience in the stands, “come back as soon as possible around the world and we enjoy the spectators on the track.”