WATCH: Rafael Nadal offers young fan to play against Casper Ruud

Tuesday, 29 November 2022 at 06:05

Updated at Sunday, 17 November 2024 at 12:02

nadal rafael madridopen2022 florinbaltatoiu62

byZachary Wimer

Rafael Nadal and Casper Ruud are currently in South America, staging a series of exhibition matches between them to give fans a glimpse of world-class tennis.

Many have called it Nadal’s farewell tour in South America because there is very little chance that the Spaniard will be going there in the future as his calendar shrinks even more.

Who knows how much longer he will play, but it’s surely not going to be more than five years, if even half of that. To give the fans a good show, Nadal enlisted the help of Ruud, who grew up idolizing the 22-time major winner.

There is a very famous anecdote of Ruud attending Nadal’s matches as a kid, notably at Roland Garros, where he cheered for him to win. The South American exhibition tour has many stops along the way with matches scheduled across several countries.

Both of them are seemingly enjoying this tour as it’s not just a tour to play. They’ve gotten a chance to visit some really interesting places as well. Just a few days ago, footage of them playing football at 2 AM at the airport surfaced. Both were smiling and enjoying their time.

Nadal now made a young fan very happy as he offered the kid to play Ruud instead of him during one of their matches. It happened in Quito, Ecuador, with the young kid ultimately opting to do so, to the great delight of Nadal, who was spotted smiling.

"You want to play a point with Casper? You play. Come on. You play tennis? Come."

This whole tour is simply meant as a celebration of tennis and Nadal as a tennis player. He likely won’t ever play tennis in any of those cities again, and since he has a lot of South American fans, Nadal simply wanted to give them something nice.

So far, it’s been a huge success with stands packed in all of the locations they played in.