Rafael Nadal saw off the threat of Novak Djokovic for another year to win his ninth French Open title and a record fifth in succession.<\/p>\n
The Spaniard, 28, coped better in hot conditions as he won 3-6 7-5 6-2 6-4 in three hours and 31 minutes.<\/p>\n
Nadal is the first man ever to win a major title nine times, taking his Grand Slam total to 14.<\/p>\n
The victory also means he will remain world number one ahead of Djokovic.<\/p>\n
It is the third year in a row that Nadal has ended Djokovic’s hopes of winning the one Grand Slam title he lacks, with the Serb in particular struggling on a stifling Parisian afternoon and ending with a double fault on match point.<\/p>\n
Nadal extended his incredible run at Roland Garros to 66 wins and just one defeat in the last 10 years.<\/p>\n
That record looked under threat when he dropped the first set as his usually fearsome forehand let him down, five errors handing Djokovic the initiative.<\/p>\n
Both men were having to work hard in temperatures of around 27C, and Djokovic was the first to ask for iced towels to wrap around his neck at the changeovers.<\/p>\n
Nadal finally made his move when he broke for 4-2, only to lose his advantage straight away as the nervous errors returned in the following game.<\/p>\n
Djokovic had won their last four matches but taking on Nadal in a five-set contest on Court Philippe Chatrier is a very different kind of test.<\/p>\n
The 27-year-old Serb faltered badly with a tie-break in sight, offering up a double fault and a forehand error before Nadal smacked a forehand winner to level the score.<\/p>\n
It was a huge blow to Djokovic’s hopes and he faded further in the third set.<\/p>\n
After dumping a straightforward volley in the net to lose serve in game two, the second seed took some tablets at a changeover in an attempt to improve his condition.<\/p>\n
Nadal scented victory once again, breaking twice on his way to the set and leaving Djokovic to stare in disbelief at coach Boris Becker in the stands after one error.<\/p>\n
Another poor volley and a wild backhand into the tramlines saw Djokovic fall 4-2 down in the fourth, but Nadal was now having his own issues, bending over apparently in some discomfort and badly mistiming a smash to give the break straight back.<\/p>\n
With cloud cover giving Djokovic some respite from the sun, he was showing signs of launching a renewed assault only to falter with his opponent under pressure.<\/p>\n
A terrific backhand pass helped Nadal to match point and Djokovic, disrupted by a call from the crowd, fired his second serve long to leave the Spaniard on his knees in his familiar celebratory pose.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Source: BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Rafael Nadal saw off the threat of Novak Djokovic for another year to win his ninth French Open title and a record fifth in succession. The Spaniard, 28, coped better in hot conditions as he won 3-6 7-5 6-2 6-4 in three hours and 31 minutes. Nadal is the first man ever to win a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":23444,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[3,31],"class_list":["post-23443","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-ghana-news","tag-professor-adei"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23443","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=23443"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23443\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/23444"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=23443"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=23443"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=23443"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}