One of the countless things

Rafael Nadal

has shown

throughout his extraordinary career is how he grows as difficulties increase and tournaments progress. Before

Pablo Carreño

, sixth seed, by far the most qualified rival he has had in this edition of the Count of Godó, he offered his most recognizable image, that of an intimidating tennis player, firm in the back of the court, capable of dominating with solvency the rallies and rowing until exhaustion when it was his turn to defend. So he quickly escaped on the scoreboard, against a rival who was sweating blood to win a point. Recent champion in the ATP 250 of Marbella, the Asturian has lost in his eight appointments with Nadal and never took a set from him on clay.

Nadal won 6-3 and 6-2, in one hour and 29 minutes, and will play this Sunday against

Stefanos Tsitsipas

at the Conde de Godó his first final since last October he won the thirteenth Roland Garros title to equal the 20

Roger Federer's

greats

.

The Greek beat

Jannik Sinner

6-3 by a double

and he appears in the final match in perfect magazine condition: he has just won his first Masters 1000 in Monte Carlo, without giving up a single set, a record he has kept in Barcelona.

He has the plus of having lifted two sets against Nadal in the quarterfinals of the last Australian Open, in the most recent meeting between the two, although in the head-to-head he is 6-2 down.

This is how the 2018 final is repeated, easily resolved by the host.

Carreño was coming off three very tough sets against

Diego Schwartzman

, from a match in which he remained to survive and which ended around nine o'clock on Friday night.

Nadal allowed himself a brief training session after achieving

the easiest victory of the tournament

against

Cameron Norrie

in a match that ended three hours before the Spaniard.

But the distance marked by Nadal had little to do with the wear of one and the other.

Ephemeral resistance

Carreño had to take extreme risks to try to destabilize his adversary and he rushed on many occasions or lacked the necessary precision. A strange game, the seventh of the first set, allowed him to clean up the scoreboard after the Manacoran missed a shot spectacularly and gave up his serve with a double fault. This circumstance gave slight wings to the Gijon, who then won his serve in white and threatened on three occasions to break the left-hander again and reach 4-5. Nadal neutralized them and took the set, not before seeing how he began to find greater resistance on the other side of the network, all from that

wrong

smash

.

The stake was fleeting.

Erected in an unapproachable tower in the face of Carreño's attacks, Nadal continued to gain ground.

He got away like a shot in the second set and completed his best match of the dirt tour.

The Asturian only had to nod, resign himself to seeing a player pass already with the works that have made him the best tennis player on earth, a man willing to relativize the stumble in the Monte Carlo quarterfinals and try to settle accounts with Tsitsipas, the player more regular so far this year, winning its twelfth Count of Godó.

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