Rafael Nadal, the superhero who spread his wings to fly to infinity and beyond

I confess I’ve spent long minutes with a blank page trying to find a way to describe what Rafa Nadal has achieved. Their numbers, their records and their statistics do not end up contributing to give a dimension to what has been achieved, but to remain more disoriented in the immensity. You cannot label or give a logical context to your work.

The record list makes you focus on seeing how you made that trophy list, but my intention is to try and give it a dimension. As a former tennis player, and without underestimating who wasn’t, this task is much more incredible for me, because one has lived through so many moments and had other modest results. It is a difficult task.

When you play with numbers and comparisons, you see that Nadal has won his 14th Roland Garros title, the same number that Pete Sampras has achieved in total in his Grand Slam career. As a former tennis player, understanding how difficult it is to get to a last resort, it could be said that many have built a reputation simply by having access to very important instances and not necessarily winning them. And it is well deserved, by the way. Because being among the best, even once in a Grand Slam tournament, is more than enough to be your cover letter for life.

But at this Roland Garros, Nadal won his 22nd Grand Slam and it’s the first time he has beaten four top 10 players on the way to a title. Clearly it’s not just another title, why surpassed even what he himself had imagined.

When he had six or seven trophies – choose the number you want -, if he had been told he would have won Roland Garros 14 times, I think Nadal would have laughed, thanking the generosity, but manifesting that sign as something impossible to achieve.

We all fall into that kind of impossibility of being able to describe this situation in a convincing way, which allows us to express how incredible Rafael Nadal has achieved. It happens to the great characters who were legends and who have marked historical moments. It happens to those who have had modest success. And it happens to those who have never touched a racket.

As we said in the previous columns, the difficulties of this tournament were perhaps the most demanding for him. Logically, due to his ability to endure and live with the physical discomfort it made him think at some point that Nadal would find it very, very difficult to continue.

He did not miss that foot that was about to mistreat him and gave him that firm and decisive step to overcome what ended up being one of the most complex matches that the Spaniard had: the one that beat Novak Djokovic. Unfortunately, Zverev’s misfortune meant that the race ended unhappily due to the German’s injury.

How to explain what happened if it could certainly be easier for him perhaps to win another Roland Garros than to argue why he got it in Paris. Nadal wrote a new story without even having shone and with a resounding 6-0, to seal this brand in three sets that we don’t know how to qualify.

Nadal had difficulties along his path, had very complex moments and was able to maintain his attitude, his courage, his posture, especially when things didn’t work out for him. Otherwise it would have been easier, of course. But if she didn’t have that ability, we wouldn’t talk about everything he has achieved.

The truth is that in this Roland Garros, Rafa started off on the wrong foot. And that foot could be the reason for not reaching another title. But Nadal proved once again that when one foot cannot be trusted, like a superhero he pulled out the wings that allowed him to fly to infinity and beyond.