Rafael Nadal officially returned to tennis by playing a pretty good match to beat Dominic Thiem in two sets at the 2024 Brisbane International.
What had been advertised for weeks finally happened as Nadal officially played his first singles match back. We had already seen Nadal in action in Brisbane, but it was a doubles match, and it wasn't very good as he was overmatched.
Things looked a lot better in the singles against a former rival, Dominic Thiem, who admittedly is not playing very strong tennis at the moment. The Austrian barely made it out of the qualifiers and today simply couldn't find what he needed.
It's not a matchup problem for him because he actually beat Nadal in the last two matches before this one, but that was before his injury, and he's never been the same player since. As for Nadal, this win moves him up in the Open Era ranks, solely putting him as the 4th winningest player in modern tennis.
The match was pretty competitive to start, but Nadal handled it fine. On serve, there were basically no problems as he won the majority of points comfortably. On return, Nadal struggled to exert too much pressure early but got better with it as the match went on.
Eventually, he got the break he needed and took the opening set 7-5. The second one was a bit easier as he broke Thiem immediately to take a 3-0 lead and from there he was able to cruise to the finish line. A really solid performance from the Spaniard.
He was dominant on his serve dropping only a handful of points, seriously just 2 on his first and 2 on his second serve all match. He totalled 10 winners and only 3 unforced as well, as well as 2 aces. The final score was 7-5 6-1.
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