Rafael Nadal returned to the tennis courts at the 2024 Bastad Open, beating Leo Borg in two sets to advance at the ATP 250 event.
Nadal’s first singles match since losing to Alexander Zaverev at Roland Garros was a straight-sets win over Borg. The Swedish player, of course, is the son of legendary Bjorn Borg, albeit not so much in tennis talent terms as he’s yet to really make a strong breakthrough.
Obviously, he has plenty of talent, and at times, he’s played decent tennis, but whenever he’s played with a Top-100-ranked player in his tennis career, Borg shows a lot of struggles, mostly with consistency.
Nadal is far better than a Top-100 player, especially on clay, and he showed it in their first-round match. The start was slow for the Spaniard, as he was getting into his rhythm, but once he found his rhythm, he was able to take over the match comfortably.
The opening set was quite impressive from Nadal because he served well, which made things very easy for him. He barely dropped any points on his serve and didn’t allow a single break point in the first set, winning it 6-3.
The second one opened with an early break for Nadal because he exploited his opponent’s second serve well. Borg did fairly well behind his first serve, as he’s got a decent serve, but when the rallies developed behind his slower second serve, Nadal was able to quickly overmatch him.
Overall, it was a solid outing for Nadal, the perfect first match back, as he got to play a lower-ranked opponent, but the coming matches should say more about his real level.
Tomas Martin Ethcheverry, with whom he practiced before this event, admitted that Nadal is playing at a high level, and the 38-year-old will want to prove it also on the tennis court.
Still, we’ll have to see how he does against stronger opposition because Borg is not really on this level yet. The final score was 6-3, 6-4 for Nadal, who stopped his first-ever losing streak on clay, having lost back-to-back matches in Rome and at the French Open.
In the second round of the tournament, the 14-time Roland Garros champion will play against Cameron Norrie from the United Kingdom, who outplayed Slovakia’s Jozef Kovalik in the first round of the competition.
