From struggling at 2 sets down to claiming one of the biggest victories the sport has seen, Rafael Nadal gave tennis a beautiful gift today.
Also, not to mention, himself.
With a scintillating victory over Daniil Medvedev at the Australian Open, he is now the male tennis player with the most number of Grand Slams titles – 21 – to his name, inching past Roger Federer and Novak Djokovic, both of whom have won 20.
Nadal’s resilience today mirrored the persistence he has shown in the last few years, and in a larger sense, his entire career.
He came back from a serious injury on his left foot, to accomplish something that almost everyone would have predicted he would, likely, but after the ‘greatest of all time’. This is something one can’t blame people for, ‘the greatest of all time’ has earned that title.
Nadal proved us wrong, though.
And we happily accept this defeat as we bow down to the living example that if you love something more than life and commit to it with all your heart, you end up doing things that were earlier unimaginable.
As corny as it sounds, this is what all the records in sports and every achievement boils down to: how much you love, and how well.
Tennis is fortunate to find a lover like Rafael Nadal, most of us do not have that kind of luck.