No Damage, Not Comfortable Ahead of Paris

 
By Richard Pagliaro | @TennisNow | Monday, July 22, 2024
Photo credit: Adam Ihse/TT Agency/Getty

Rafael Nadal feels physically fit following his run to the Bastad final.

The 22-time Grand Slam champion concedes his form is far from where he wants to be heading into this month’s Paris Olympics.

More: Alcaraz Dismisses Djokovic to Defend Wimbledon

Playing his first ATP final, Nuno Borges broke serve five times surprising Nadal 6-3, 6-2 in the Bastad final to capture his first career Tour-level title in a moment he called “a dream come true.”

After his first final since the 2022 Roland Garros title match, Nadal said the good news is his body feels good. The bad news: he’s not comfortable on court.

“The level was so far from what it should be. Probably the energy too,” Nadal said. “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.”

Indeed, Nadal’s three-set win over fourth-seeded Mariano Navone spanned four hours—the longest ATP three-set match of the year and second-longest three-setter of Nadal’s storied career.

Fourteen-time Roland Garros champion Nadal will return to Paris for the first time since his French Open first-round loss to Alexander Zverev.

The 38-year-old Spanish superstar is planning to play both singles and doubles—partnering four-time Grand Slam champion Carlos Alcaraz—as he pursues a third career Olympic gold medal.

“I played the final, that’s positive. I was able to play long matches without having an injury, that’s good,” Nadal said.

The two-time Olympic gold-medal champion said his challenge is translating his form on the practice court to the match court.

“In some way I felt that I arrived here practicing much better than what I played on the tournament during the whole week. That’s something that I am not satisfied with,” Nadal said. “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.”