At midday, the track is an oven. Cell phones and computers overheat. The audience covers their heads. At the foot of the track, the photographers sweat.
The wind is not blowing but the ball is blowing for Casper Ruud (25), the Norwegian who comes from somewhere, we don’t really know where, since his country has produced cross-country skiers, biathletes and marathon runners (how can we forget Grete Waitz and Ingrid Kristiansen, who were the queens of the New York and London marathon, back in the seventies and eighties?), but had never given tennis players.
We will see how we remember Ruud’s tennis in the future. After all, his game has few nuances, it is born and dies at the back of the court. Ruud doesn’t sign drop shots or lobs, nor aces. His community managers will have a difficult time: there is no way to create a video with his best moments.
However, his academicism is irreproachable, as is his effectiveness, and with those wicks he ends up defeating Tomás Etcheverry (24), the elongated Argentine who, together with Báez, Facundo Díaz and Cerúndolo, illuminates the new Argentine school, and who is only beginning to give in at 1h16m, when he loses the tie break and misses the first round.
By then, Ruud has completely calmed down and is wearing stripes. He points out the decisive points, those that break a tie, and the public has decided on his side.
– Let’s go, Casper, let’s go – shouts the fans, who have been admiring the Norwegian for years although they are still waiting for a final accolade.
He has played three Grand Slam finals, also one final of the Nitto Series, the masters tournament, but he has always shot at the post.
“I’m missing that happy ending,” he says later, after winning 7-6 (8) and 6-4, in 1h57m, when asked, and then he evokes the bad experience of the other Sunday, the final of the 1,000 Masters in Monte Carlo that Tsitsipas had taken him away.
–You lost to Tsitsipas on Sunday, what are you going to do to prevent it from happening again? –She asks him.
–At the moment, I just played my best tennis all week. I have done it against an opponent who serves very well, and in the comings and goings of the tie break of the first set. I built the points, I felt solid. What I have to do is sleep well and not think too much about titles. When I have done it, when I became obsessed with winning something, it made me nervous and led me to fail. That’s what happened to me in Monte Carlo last week.
Greece has not produced great tennis players either, nor have we talked much about them, but here is Stéfanos Tsitsipas (25), the giant who is dying on the Rafa Nadal court, what a week of surprises and comebacks, he is finally in the final.
Tsitsipas gets stuck and comes and goes, and the trail of feelings he leaves in his wake has nothing to do with Ruud’s academicism. Tsitsipas is the roller coaster, the uncertainty and the agony.
Tsitsipas does not crush his adversaries, he lets them live, sometimes he gets tangled with himself. His game takes risks, sometimes he gets impatient, and that’s where his opponents sneak in.
Facundo Díaz had given him a hard time the day before, in the quarterfinals: he had had to rescue two match points on Friday, and only then, starring in a Greek tragedy, was how Tsitsipas had finally dismantled the Argentine.
Now, he suffers against Lajovic.
Dusan Lajovic (33) is Serbian, like Djokovic, he is a middle class on the circuit who works under the tutelage of Josep Perlas.
(In his day, Perlas has trained Moyá, Albert Costa, Coria, Almagro, Ferrero, Fognini and Tipsarevic; he has also been part of the G4 and G3, the group of wise men who won two Davis Cups for Spain)
Perlas sits in Lajovic’s box (59th in the world) and catapults him in the initial moments, when Tsitsipas becomes overwhelmed and his pupil grows.
Sometimes Tsitsipas serves as the angels, and then mishandles a ball, sending it into the net for no apparent reason. His game outlines an inner storm. Tsitsipas fights against that destiny that seems to turn its back on him because, like Ruud, he has also been in the elite for a handful of years, but he has not won any major either: in 2023 he missed the Australian Open final against Djokovic; in 2021, that of Roland Garros, also against Djokovic.
He hasn’t even won here.
Three titles have been lost in Pedralbes, two against Nadal and one against Alcaraz, and now he is wondering what he should do, how to disfigure Lajovic and overcome the initial set, which the Serbian takes, as he had taken him the day before. Facundo Díaz.
He does it by calming down: he minimizes the risks, cooks the points and waits for Lajovic to be the one who gets impatient, sees how the second set flies and suffocates, definitively, in the third: 5-7, 6-4 and 6-1, in 2h10m.
