BASTAD, Sweden — Rafael Nadal has always analysed his performances with great perspective. After a disappointing 6-3, 6-2 defeat to Nuno Borges in the Nordea Open final, the Spanish legend saw both sides of the coin when looking back on his week in Bastad, Sweden.
While the 38-year-old was not happy with his tennis overall, despite grinding his way to his first final since Roland Garros in 2022, Nadal was boosted by the way his body handled the heavy load of match play on the ATP 250’s clay courts.
Making first appearance at the ATP Tour event since winning the singles as a 19-year-old in 2005, Nadal was warming up for his bid for another Olympic medal at the Paris 2024 Games.
Nadal won an Olympic singles gold medal in Beijing in 2008 and a doubles gold in the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics.
He will team up with four-times major winner Carlos Alcaraz, 21, in the doubles at Paris 2024.
“The level was so far from what it should be,” he said of his display. “Probably the energy too. It has been a long week with long matches. Even if my body, I don’t have damage, that’s important — but mentally and physically, I am not used to playing four days in a row and playing long matches,” he added according to atptour.com.
The seventh-seeded Portuguese player broke the Nadal serve five times on his way to a first ATP tour victory. It was Nadal’s first final since the 2022 French Open.
“It´s crazy, in tennis it doesn´t happen when you expect it sometimes,” said Borges according to AP.
Nadal, a 22-time Grand Slam champion, was making his first appearance in a final since winning the French Open in June 2022. Borges, of Portugal, broke the 38-year-old Spaniard five times, however, and won the match in 88 minutes. Nadal hit just five winners against 19 unforced errors.
“I don’t know what to say. I think I was wishing for this moment for a while already,” Borges, 27, said in his post-match interview.
“It’s crazy, in tennis it doesn’t happen when you expect it sometimes. I know we all wanted Rafa to win, a part of me wished that too, but something even bigger inside of me really pushed through.”
After beating fifth seed Cameron Norrie in straight sets on Thursday, Nadal won three-set marathons against fourth seed Mariano Navone and Duje Ajdukovic over the next two days. Those battles appeared to take their toll on Sunday, when Nadal was flat against Borges.
“I need to analyse well and find the reason why I played that way, even if the energy was not right,” he said. “A lot of things that can’t happen on court if you want to play at the level that I want to play. Things like this can happen today, and that’s the situation. I don’t have to lie or hide anything.”
Despite his disappointment, Nadal gave full credit to Borges, who won his first ATP Tour title: “I have to give the credit to him,” Nadal said.
“He did a lot of things well, missed not much, returned well. He converted opportunities, so well done for him, happy for him. He deserved it more than the rest of the players who played in this tournament. I wish him to enjoy this great moment.”
As he looks ahead to the Paris Olympics at Roland Garros, where Nadal will play singles and compete in doubles with Carlos Alcaraz, the Spaniard is hopeful that he can translate his high level in practice to the match court. Even when he was winning in Bastad, he was not fully happy with his tennis.
“I played the final, that’s positive,” he said, looking at the big picture this week. “I was able to play long matches without having an injury, that’s good.
“In some way I felt that I arrived here practising much better than what I played on the tournament during the whole week.
“That’s something that I am not satisfied with. I arrived here with the feeling that I was playing a good level and I was not able to show that during the whole week. That is something that I am not happy with.
“Anyway it’s a final, so I can’t say it’s a bad result because it’s the first final since a long time ago. But I was not able to feel myself comfortable enough during the whole week to be satisfied with the week of tennis that I played.”
Sixth-seeded Matteo Berrettini of Italy, meanwhile, claimed his ninth ATP Tour title following a convincing 6-3, 6-1 win over French qualifier Quentin Halys in the final in Switzerland.
Berrettini, now a two-time winner of the tournament, held a 5-3 lead in the first set before play was suspended for 30 minutes due to rain. Undaunted, he won seven of the next eight games to dispatch Halys in 59 minutes.
Berrettini won 90 per cent of his first-serve points to return to the winner’s circle at the event for the first time since 2018.
