Basically Nadal won the tournament playing his B- game. Sort of how Novak won Wimbledon.
Before people scream at me, I can assure you that in 15 years of watching Nadal, I've never seen him choke as much on forehands - one shot that never fails him consistently. His serve, backhand etc would go AWOL when was tight. But the bread and butter forehand would always work - even if it was moonballed back, he would not make an error on a sitter forehand.
Surprisingly, he made plenty of those all tournament. He choked, and then some, against most of his opponents. He relied on experience and luck to get him through and won ugly. Hence all the tears at the end, because he knew he was beatable this slam and still had to somehow cross the finish line. [/QUOTE]
Lol....your idealized image of Nadal being utterly perfect and unbeatable has always been comical. But if you want to play this game and argue that 2019 Nadal was weak, can you please tell us which versions of Nadal were A or A+ versions?
Then the simplest backhands were in the bottom of the net and the easiest overhead and volley putaways were missed when he got tight, like the one that got Medvedev back in the match in set 3. That simple sitter volley missed, might have haunted Nadal had he lost the match.
In 2012, supposedly in his prime, he missed a similar shot against Djokovic at the Australian Open. Missing one easy shot is not an indication of a terrible overall level.
Despite all the commentators favoring Nadal pre match, I knew Medvedev had a legit shot given how Rafa was playing. Nadal's tennis is nowhere near his 2010, 2013, 2017 UsOpen wins
Why is it "nowhere near"? Djokovic's forehand was better than Nadal's for most of the 2013 final and produced far more winners.
Martina Navritilova said that as you get older you start to be more afraid, you get weaker mentally and hesitate more. This is what happened to Rafa. He played all tournament with the crushing weight of his own expectations which were 100x magnified when Novak and Roger lost. Suddenly anything other than Nadal championship win would be a complete failure for Rafa.
For Nadal this wasn't anything out of the ordinary because he always manages to take advantage of his opportunities. His mindset is oriented toward "one match at a time." I think you're making too big a deal of the pressure because that kind of thing has never affected him much.
