No. 2 of '22: Rafael Nadal never gives up in career-defining Australian Open final reversal against Medvedev

“I lost a lot of times here having chances, sometimes I was a little bit unlucky,” Rafael Nadal said after this year’s Australian Open final. “I just wanted to keep believing till the end, no? I just wanted to give me a chance.”

Nadal had been more than “a little bit unlucky” in title matches in Melbourne over the years. He had won one, back in 2009, and had generally excelled Down Under. Yet each year he left Australia with his hopes dashed. Rafa lost four finals there, each one in highly regrettable fashion. Twice—to Novak Djokovic in 2012 and Roger Federer in 2017—he had led by a service break in the fifth set, only to see his rival sprint past him at the finish line. Once, in 2014, he had thrown his back out in the warm-up before facing an opponent, Stan Wawrinka, who had never beaten him. And once he had been unceremoniously drubbed by Djokovic.

For the better part of three sets, it looked as if Daniil Medvedev would give Nadal unceremonious drubbing number two. Rafa, who was in a full sweat after just three games, appeared to have no idea how to play the Russian, no idea where to try to put the ball against a 6’6” albatross who was everywhere at once. “Nadal is going to have to go so hard just to stay in it,” ESPN’s Patrick McEnroe said. When he lost the first set 6-2, it was tough to disagree.

Nadal did go hard in the second set, but when it was over, his prospects looked even bleaker. He had used his slice to neutralize Medvedev, and his drop shot to disrupt his rhythm. He had gone up a break twice, reached set point, and served for the set. He had taken the Laver Arena crowd, which was fully behind him, on an emotional roller-coaster ride.

By the time the set reached a tiebreaker, ESPN’s other McEnroe, John, understood the stakes: “He’s expended so much energy, it’s even more important that he wins this,” McEnroe said. But Rafa didn’t win it. He led 5-3 in the tiebreaker, then lost four straight points.

Five games into the third set, the best you could say was that at least it wasn’t going to be close. Nadal was a step slow now, deflated by the result of the second set, and struggling to put his body weight into his shots. Serving at 2-3, Rafa hit two late, tired forehands, and went down 0-40. The crowd could only muster a sad murmur as it waited for the inevitable. “This is all but over,” Patrick McEnroe said, and again it was tough to disagree.

Then Rafa, for the first time in a long time in an Australian Open final, caught a break. Medvedev tightened up. At 15-40, he had a look at a high backhand that he typically crushes for a crosscourt winner. This time, he pulled up just enough to send the ball over the baseline. On the next point, his last break point, Medvedev made a mental error by trying a drop shot that Nadal tracked down. Rafa had a lifeline, and he clung to it. He held; three games later, he broke with a backhand pass; serving for the set at 5-4, he hit four straight winners. How did Rafa turn that seemingly lost set around? Even he couldn’t tell you.

“In that moment, of course, situation have been critical,” he said. “But sport is unpredictable, no? If you fight till the end, normal thing is lose the match in straight sets after that situation.”

Nadal kept his roll going in the fourth set, and then, after a few more shifts in momentum, he found himself serving for the title at 5-4 in the fifth. Even at that stage, though, anyone familiar with his Aussie Open history knew it was going to be tough for him to block out the past and turn a miraculous comeback into a miraculous win. Those two five-set defeats weighed heavily on him. Too heavily, it seemed. Serving at 5-4, 30-0, he pulled up on a forehand and sent it long, double faulted, and drilled an easy backhand into the net to give the break back.

Was Rafa destined, every five years, to lose in maximally devastating fashion in an Australian Open final? He seemed to think so, as he told the BBC, in comical fashion, later.

“I said, ‘F*ck, one more time, break up in the fifth, I gonna lose the advantage again like in 2012 and 2017,’” Rafa said. Then he told himself, “I can lose the match, or he can beat me, but I can’t give up, even if I am destroyed mentally.”

This time there were two things in Rafa’s game that saved him, one old and one relatively new.

The first was his well-known ability to break back, to leave a bad service game behind and dig back in right away. After giving away his serve at 5-4, Nadal won the opening point at 5-5 with a forehand pass. He followed that with a backhand pass, and kept enough balls in play to make Medvedev eventually miss a forehand at break point.

I can lose the match, or he can beat me, but I can’t give up, even if I am destroyed mentally. —Rafael Nadal

The second thing that helped him was his serve. It wasn’t always a match-ending weapon for him, but he has made it better. At 6-5, Rafa hit a service winner to go up 30-0, and an ace—the best cure for nerves—to reach triple championship point. He closed it with another first serve, which led him to the net, which led him to Grand Slam title No. 21.

“Was the day to give everything, no?” Rafa said. “I enjoyed the fight. I enjoyed the emotions. At the end have this trophy with me means everything today, no?”

He was asked what made him keep believing he could win there, 13 years after his first and only title.

“Love for the game, passion, positive attitude, and working spirit,” he said. “That’s all, no? And the right people next to me helping every single day. I think that’s all.”

That night, all the way until five-all in the fifth, I was ready to write about Rafa coming up short one more time. But five hours after the match started, in the tireless style that is his trademark, he finally found a way to rewrite that story. In so doing, he turned Rod Laver Arena from a site of never-ending sorrow, to the site of his career-capping triumph.