Four months ago I was with help of crutches and this sunday he is going to play the Australian Open final. It is the eternal return of Reef Nadal, an athlete who has learned to live with the pain. During his long professional career, since 2003, Nadal has accumulated three and a half years of inactivity with the sum of one and another injury. And it has always come back. Sometimes stronger. now compete with a broken bone, the tarsal scaphoid, a chronic and degenerative disease in his left foot, Müller-Weiss syndrome. The Balearic has confessed that recently he argued with his team the possibility of withdrawal. Finally he pulled forward. “If I break, I break”he told his coach and friend Carlos Moya. Today he got into his sixth final in Australia, which is the 29th in a grand, and aspires to his 21st crown in a Grand Slam, a galactic record. That’s why he broke down in tears after his victory against Matteo Berrettini; That is why he maintains, without hesitation, that this success is more important for him than some of his titles. Defeat pain and defy logic, resisting the cruel hammering of time, is a triumph in itself.
There are those who think, quite sensibly, that Nadal might not have gone so far in Melbourne if he had come across Novak Djokovic in the semifinals, as it corresponded to him by the draw of the picture. We will never know. Set an asterisk to the champion of this edition due to the absence of Djokovic would be, in any case, an unfair objection. Nadal has also caused low in many tournaments, without going any further in the last two big ones: Wimbledon y US Open. You just have to rescue the previous data from physical hardship, those three and a half years in the dry dock, to deduce that Rafa’s career would have been very different with good health. But his career has been what it has been, just like Nole’s. History is written day by day, decision by decision, racket by racket. And neither of them can have reason to complain, because they have gone as far as can be dreamed of, they are already eternal. Both stand together Roger Federer, What the greatest in history. By their titles, yes. But also for examples like the one that Nadal is giving in Australia.