The outcome is a celebration for Casper Ruud (25), who would have said it an hour earlier, because just as the final was coming to light, the Norwegian was looking like he did a week ago, again at the horses' feet.
He has lost the serve and has lost the first game, and there rides Stéfanos Tsitsipas (25), this Greek with long hair and a lethargic face who a week ago, in Monte Carlo, had stolen the final of a Masters 1,000 and who now, in Barcelona, he seems ready to steal the final of an ATP 500.
If Tsitsipas takes flight it is a bad thing for the Norwegian, because the Greek is fire and passion, and sometimes he gets tangled with the wind that dances in his mind but, if everything goes in his favor, then he has enough tennis to take ahead of anyone, Ruud included.
What does Ruud do?
Be still.
Stop thinking, stop tormenting yourself for playing in a final. It is said that this is just another match, nothing more than that, she shakes off her nerves and tries to tickle the Greek. He raises the power of his serve by one point, goes up to 165 km/h (still far from the 190 km/h that Tsitsipas frequents), he also lengthens the exchanges and yes, four games later, he returns the break and the score is equalized.
Things become 3-3 and from there, the game scripts a new story.
Tsitsipas insists, maintains the offensive, attacks Ruud from all sides, and the Norwegian plays his tennis.
Even in its lack of nuance, it is academic, technically perfect. And collected in his lair, he disconfigures Tsitsipas, who fails too much in the last game of the first set, when he serves to reach the tie break, in vain.
At 57 minutes, the Norwegian takes control of the set.
-I have tried to be aggressive in the rest, look for it closer to the line. And stress Tsitsipas. "If I let him take over the game, it's too dangerous," Ruud will say later.
At this point in the game, it is Tsitsipas who gets entangled in his servitudes. He faces a physical and mental Everest.
Tsitsipas has lost three finals in Barcelona, two to Nadal and a third to Alcaraz, last year, so he feels indebted to the tournament.
As he walks through the halls of the RCTB, and goes back and forth from the Gran Hyatt to the club, Avenida de Pedralbes above, Tsitsipas continues to relive the day of his dawn, in that pre-pandemic 2018. Back then we had barely heard about Greek tennis, much less about it, since it barely appeared in the top 100.
And so it had arrived then.
Without rhyme or reason, one after another, he had knocked down Moutet, Schwartzman, Ramos, Thiem and Carreño, and had only lost in the final to Nadal, the king of the land, the king of tennis in those days (how we will miss him less).
Since then, the debt. Two other finals had gone to the Greek, the one in 2021 and the one in 2023, and now he doesn't want another one, what a burden.
(...)
On the Rafa Nadal court, in the middle of the afternoon, the crowd doesn't know how to get on. The sun comes and goes, and we put on and take off our layers, and Tsitsipas doesn't really know what to do either, how to dismantle this perfect Ruud so tenacious that he tortures him like a Chinese drop.
At the end of the fourth game, the Greek sends a ball to the net, and there he looks for oxygen. He changes racquets, runs around a little, tries to wake up, transforms himself into passballs, everything he has never been and everything he is not, and entrusts himself to a superior being. He's down a set and down 3-1, and he's looked like that, in a hurry, before.
For example in the quarterfinals, against Facundo Díaz.
Or in the semifinal, against Dusan Lajovic.
-If I want to win here one day, I must customize my game, I must adapt better to this place. And I must also maximize my performance. "If I play three sets every time, I'm wasting energy, I'm not being economical," he will say later, at the press conference.
Who knows?
Ruud knows it.
The Norwegian is already the owner of the stage. It is enough for him to continue doing his thing: he stays back, he does not even go up to hang the clothes, he passes balls, he passes them and he passes them, and he does not even grant a gift to Tsitsipas, who lives in torment, listening to Apóstolos's speech in Greek, his father and coach, and he leaves without wanting it, he leaves bewildered, there is no way with this tournament, the Godó that rewards him so much and spares him so much.
"If it hadn't been for Casper, this start to the season on dirt would have been perfect," he tells Tommy Robredo, still on the track, who has asked him in Spanish.
(It is Paula Badosa who teaches accelerated classes in Spanish).
-Rafa Nadal win on the court? This is my new favorite track! And it's also my new favorite tournament: it's the biggest tournament I've ever won. "And this is all I can say in Spanish," says Ruud, who speaks in Spanish and then switches to English. This is important for me. I have spent many years in this country. By the way, it's my sister's birthday.
And the tournament says goodbye with the song of "happy birthday."
