By Chris Oddo | Thursday January 24, 2019
Perfect start. Perfect middle. Perfect end.
Rafael Nadal handed upstart Stefanos Tsitsipas a clinical beatdown on Thursday night in Melbourne, handing the No.14-seed a 6-2, 6-4, 6-0 defeat and booking a spot in his 25th career Grand Slam final.
Many had hopes that the 20-year-old sensation would make a match of it against Nadal on Thursay. After all he had stunned two-time defending champion Roger Federer in the round of 16 and backed up that colossal win with a four-set takedown of Spaniard Roberto Bautista Agut. But it was Nadal who turned first blood into a bloodletting on Rod Laver Arena and achieved one of his most impressive hardcourt victories in quite some time.
The Spaniard was dominant on serve and never gave the Greek so much as a sniff until the final game of the match when only pride was on the line. Even then the Spaniard snuffed out Tsitsipas’ lone break point opportunity of the evening and took the final three points to claim his victory in a cool one hour and 46 minutes.
In total, Nadal dropped just 12 points on serve and he struck 28 winners to 14 unforced errors to improve to 3-0 lifetime against Tsitsipas and 61-12 lifetime at the Australian Open.
It was a stunning reminder that Nadal is still at the head of the class and the changing of the guard that factions of tennis fans and pundits have been pining for is still for off on the horizon.
Experience plays a large part, of course, but also there is a completeness to Nadal’s game that Tsitsipas could not match. The Greek’s glaring weakness, his backhand return and his return tactics in general, was exploited by Nadal from the very beginning until the bitter end.
Having faced Nadal twice, including once on a hardcourt last summer in Toronto, some thought that Tsitsipas might be able to concoct a winning strategy, but he never made any inroads and his ineptitude on return eventually bled into his serving as the pressure mounted.
To his credit, Tsitsipas kept the second set close and played brilliantly in the fifth game that saw him rally from 0-40 down by winning five straight points.
It was the type of effort he would need to reproduce over and over on this night but two games later, when he was broken for 5-4 in the second set, it was clear that this would not be the case.
Nadal was too potent, to focused, to fabulous. The Spaniard probed Tsitsipas all night, forcing into both corners of the court regularly, and he never once took his foot off the accelerator.
It’s been that way all tournament for Nadal. He has spent barely 12 hours on court in six matches and suddenly the player who was surrounded by question marks heading into the tournament based on his health is sitting pretty, with two nights off before Sunday night’s final against either Novak Djokovic or Lucas Pouille.
The axiom that makes the most sense here? Never count a great champion out. Nadal’s well-documented struggles on hardcourts since the beginning of 2018 (he withdrew or retired from 17 of 18 hardcourt events in a 15-month span) may now be a thing of the past. He’s proving once again that when he’s in good health he’s a good bet to win titles, no matter the surface.