Now that we interpret everything in terms of a pandemic, Rafael Nadal has disproved epidemiologists, by winning a Grand Slam just a month after suffering a covid nothing trivial. Since this feat is far from the reach of the vast majority of uninfected tennis players, the inaugural lesson is that the coronavirus comes out, and sometimes better.
In itself, Madal’s victory in Melbourne would justify the overflowing enthusiasm around the Majorcan tennis player. Remembering that this triumph has been repeated 21 times on three continents, the world still lacks enough media power to cheer it up in its fair proportion.
The Grand Slams constitute the massively approved ranking of tennis eminence, just like the Champions League in soccer, the NBA rings in basketball or the Olympic Games in athletics. Therefore, Nadal is now the best tennis player in history, not only because of his 21 trophies but also because he was the first to win them.
Due to a matter as elementary as the date of birth, Nadal always suffered a time delay with respect to Roger Federer’s titles. Stop lagging behind, and assume the unique throne with all its consequences. The troika on a first-come, first-served basis Federer/Nadal/Djokjovic temporarily blown up, one of the triumvirs acquires the imperial rank and regains the ambition to increase the count at the next Roland Garros. Of course, no Roman emperor can compete in achievement and glory with the athletes cited here. Nadal consolidates his laurels after the self-imposed exile of Djokovic, who won three finals of Melbourne to the Majorcan and that he eliminated him in his only participation in a Grand Slam of 2021.
Someone will protest that a final is played between two players, but at the Australian Open there was no one on the other side of the net. The so-called Daniil Medvedev, with an ideal name for those who would end up thrown to the lions, is actually a Russian robot. Putin’s engineers have built it with Dostoevsky’s factions, and they will have to adjust some screw so that it can peer into the club of dizzying owners of twenty great titles.
When Kasparov lost his second confrontation with Deep Blue, he admitted that he had not attached enough importance to the IBM computer. It is a mistake that Nadal would never make, much less in the decisive match. Those who today hide their prediction that the favorite was the Dostoevsky of the racket were not misguided. Except that this prediction would be correct in the quarterfinals, never in a Grand Slam final.
The Majorcan tennis player patiently disassembled the Russian robot. It would be very literary to point out that Dostoevsky with a racket lost the final he had won because already in The Player he showed that when his characters are about to win, they reconsider fatalists who every triumph is unjust and exaggerated.
In reality, Medvedev lost his advantage by trying to imitate Nadal with poor decisions at the net. The robot designed in prose believed itself to be the pamema of Artificial Intelligence, and insisted on versifying. Creativity drowned him on this Earth there is only room for one Picasso.
The roars of Nadal’s exegetes are also priceless to unnecessarily enlarge the honors their hero deserves, when it would suffice to note that he psychologically annulled his robotic rival as soon as he woke up and began to serve with some skill.
The unspeakable triumphs of Nadal on the verge of 36 years force us to weigh the age factor, now that older people are lightly accused of being ignorant. The world champion has not been digitized, and demonstrates two contradictory laws only in appearance. The first, that the years do not count. The second, that excellence must be revalidated every day, all lifetime positions are miserable. Either that, or you stop applauding Nadal.
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Eddie is an Australian news reporter with over 9 years in the industry and has published on Forbes and tech crunch.