One of the worst defeats of the year, if not the worst, came at the end of the season and at the most inopportune moment for a Rafael Nadal who will continue without being able to say that he is champion of the masters tournament. The Spanish, in a match that he had within his reach when he served to win it in the second set, faded before Daniil Medvedev (3-6, 7-6 (4) and 6-3) and closed the season in London without adding the ATP Finals title to his record. After seven years without stepping on a final in this tournament, Nadal caressed it with his fingers, but he spoiled everything in a terrible game that triggered his doom.
And that, for many minutes, of the two and a half hours that the game lasted, he was the winner. Nadal, with far fewer matches in each and every one of his joints, has not arrived in London exhausted, nor touched by pain, as in 2017 and 2018, when he had to retire. He has done it practically fully and with a freshness that was paying off. The little disappointment with Thiem, where a couple of mistakes separated her from the triumph, she seemed forgotten after hitting the competitiveness against Stefanos Tsitsipas, but Medvedev was enemy number one, although the ‘face to face’ reflected a 3-0 favorable to Nadal. The Russian came as a favorite to the match, with the band undefeated and after crushing Novak Djokovic on the way. Perhaps in his head there was an echo of the 5-1 that the Spanish raised him last year and that is why his beginning was somewhat cautious.
Medvedev, the robot, barely endured a few games the mental attack of a Nadal who was from less to more. He had three break balls in the third game, did not take advantage of them and gave life to Nadal, who began to climb. The manacorense won the first break ball he had, closed the first set and headed to what almost seemed like a routine victory. Until the curves began.
Relaxation, after finding himself with one foot in the final, it cost him to start the second set 4-1 down. As he did last year, he lifted the disadvantage and reached 5-4 with a serve to reach the final. And the moment Nadal had to be mentally stronger than the Muscovite, he shut down. A break in white revitalized the Russian, who led the set to the tiebreaker and scored it, after another string of mistakes from his rival.
Once again the compass of the meeting had changed and Medvedev was the most comfortable on the track. His inertia was overtaking a Nadal who had lost strength and energy and who 42 winning strokes accumulated by the Russian they were tearing up. He held out what he could. Seven games, until the break that sent him to the canvas arrived. Medvedev no longer gave a chance in the last two games. He linked them, made up getting his direct serve number 13, and calibrated the semifinal in his favor, the one that he had lost and that he recovered from nowhere, just as Nadal would have signed.
His feat, which places him one step away from matching the magnificent tournament that his compatriot Nikolay Davydenko did in 2009, will lack the finishing touch this Sunday (7:00 p.m. Spanish time), when measured Dominic Thiem, executioner of Novak Djokovic. From there a new winner will emerge from an ATP Finals that have debuted a winner every year since 2016.
Nadal, for his part, ends the season and is already preparing to face what 2021 may bring him, which, at the moment, has no starting date for the first tournaments.
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