To prepare for the 2024 Olympics , where tennis takes place on clay courts, Rafael Nadal participated in the 2024 Swedish Open in Bastad. The Spanish legend is not in the seeding group but plays with a special ticket.
The seeds at this tournament include Andrey Rublev, Casper Ruud, Tallon Griekspoor, Mariano Navone, Cameron Norrie, Nuno Borges and Pave Kotov. Yet somehow, by the semi-finals, only Borges remained.
The remaining seeds were soon eliminated in round 1, round 2 and quarterfinals, in which Norrie and Navone were eliminated by Nadal in round 2 and quarterfinals respectively.
In round 1, the 38-year-old tennis player won against Leo Karl Borg - son of the legendary Bjorn Borg.
In the semi-finals, Nadal met Duje Ajdukovic - a Croatian tennis player who qualified. The world ranked 130th player is 15 years younger than Nadal.
With his youth, Ajdukovic started very well. He consecutively broke Nadal's 2 games to take a 3-0 lead. Although Rafa reclaimed a game, set 1 still ended 6-4 for Ajdukovic.
Set 2 could have followed a similar scenario when once again, Ajdukovic broke Nadal's serve in the first game. However, the Spaniard reacted very quickly with a break-point to equalize the score.
The turning point came in game 6, when Nadal continued to break and maintain his advantage to win 6-3, equalizing the score 1-1 after 2 sets.
Set 3 was decided to be much more dramatic, when Nadal was exhausted. It took him 4 hours and 1 minute to overcome Navone in the quarterfinals.
Nadal had 2 breaks first to lead 3-0, but in the next 3 games, he let Ajdukovic reclaim 2 games. In game 7, Nadal had another break to advance and maintain his advantage, ending the third set with a score of 6-4 after Ajdukovic's bad shot.
In this match, Nadal had no ace points but no double faults, while Ajdukovic had 4 direct serves but had 5 double faults.
After 2 years, Nadal had the next final in his career. The last time he reached a trophy match was at the 2022 French Open.
His opponent is the winner of the pair Borges - Thiago Agustin Tirante.
