He did it boys. The sun of a gun really did it. When I started watching the Australian Open men’s final at 9:30am, completely naked under a plush robe, content to spend the next three hours or so as basically a subhuman snail-like creature, I had no clue that five hours later, at 2:30pm, I’d be on the verge of emotional breakdown and heart palpitations. But that’s the beauty of sport at the highest levels. And after 5 and a half hours and five sets, Rafael Nadal won the 2022 Australian Open and clinched the all-time record for most grand slams by a single man (21), nudging out in front of Djokovic and Federer. Halfway through, at 2 and a half hours in, Nadal was down two sets to zero, and down 0-40 serving at 2 games to 3. The announcers literally said, “it’s all but over”. But oh were they wrong. What I and the rest of the tennis world witnessed for the next three hours was quite literally a triumph of human perseverance and skill, and tennis nearer the gods. It felt like having a front row seat to Sisyphus and his boulder, except in the final moments, just when the boulder was supposed to roll back down and crush the spirit of Sisyphus once again, he pulled out a gun, shot Hades in the head, pushed that damn rock over the precipice and escaped having known he just did the impossible. Yeah, I’m romanticizing it, but any tennis fan knows that what we just saw is nothing short of mythical. Watching someone fight that hard, in any context, is legitimately inspirational.
The rest of this fine Sunday was spent tidying up, going over what I will have to do for the upcoming week, and enjoying some Indian food. Even though yesterday I was a bit down on myself for not exactly following through with some of the productivity I wanted to accomplish, on Sundays, I always give myself a break. Ironically, I actually got even more done under this mindset, so perhaps that is a lesson for the future. Hope your Sunday was and is just as relaxing.
See you tomorrow.
Nick
Nick Denardi 