The Spaniard won by a double 7-5 and achieved his only victory in this edition of the tournament. Wide differences in the ranking with respect to his rival
The only time Rafael Nadal and Casper Ruud had met was in the Roland Garros final, no less. He easily won the Spanish to clinch his 14th Paris title and 22nd Grand Slam. Five months later, the crossing had nothing to do with its size. The Norwegian was already classified as first in the Green Group and the Spaniard was already eliminated. The only thing at stake was 200 ATP points, which is not a trivial matter between number two (Nadal) and number three in the world (Ruud), and close to 400,000 euros for the victory.
After the man from Manacor won by a double 7-5, in one hour and 43 minutes, Ruud will only be able to surpass him in the ranking if he wins the title, while Stefanos Tsitsipas It would be enough for him to reach the final to close the course in second position.
After four consecutive defeats, it was good for Nadal to leave the ATP Finals with a good game and stopping the bleeding. He served well and had 38 winners. Nothing changes in his historical balance of the tournament, which continues with the finals of 2010 and 2013 as the ceiling, but in a way it allows him to make up for the harsh punishment of the two previous games in Turin, in which he did not win a single set against Taylor Fritz and Felix Auger-Aliassime.
Two sets of similar development
Ruud missed with either shot to make it 5-4 and serve in the first set and two games later he delivered his serve to white, with rather unfortunate actions. The sequence was repeated in a similar way in the second, to which Nadal put the epilogue with a winning crossed backhand.
The Norwegian thus maintains his negative sequence when he has to face some of the top three in the ranking: he has lost all eight of his games against them. Champion this season in Buenos Aires, Geneva and Gstaad, the greatest weight in his growth was given to him by the finals of Roland Garros and the US Open, the latter lost to Alcaraz. This Friday he will meet his rival in the second consecutive semifinals of the ATP Finals, which will come from the match between Stefanos Tsitsipas and Andrey Rublev. Good friends, Nadal and Ruud will participate in a five-match exhibition tour of different Latin American countries.
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