Rafael Nadal reached his first tournament final in more than two years on Saturday, coming from a set and a break down to defeat Duje Ajdukovic 4-6, 6-3, 6-4 at the Nordea Open in Bastad, Sweden.
Nadal’s last ATP Tour final — and win — came in June 2022 at the French Open.
After dropping the first set to the Croatian qualifier, Nadal quickly went down in the second set, broken in the first game. But Nadal found another gear, breaking Ajdukovic’s serve five times throughout the rest of the two-hour, 13-minute semifinal.
‘Always it is a great feeling to be back in a final,’ Nadal, of Spain, said after the clay-court match. ‘I have won four matches in a row, something I was not able to make happen since two years ago. A lot of things happened, but still in this process of recovering, a lot of things I lost, because I had a very important hip surgery almost one year ago.
‘So things were not going that easy, but I am fighting. I am fighting during the whole tournament to be where I am today.’
In the final, Nadal will meet the winner of Saturday’s later match between Nuno Borges of Portugal and Thiago Agustin Tirante of Argentina.
