Rafael Nadal returns to action with victory over Leo Borg at Nordea Open

Rafael Nadal returned to singles action with a 6-3, 6-4 triumph on clay over Leo Borg, the 21-year-old son of Swedish great Bjorn Borg, in the first round of the Nordea Open in Bastad on Tuesday.

“For me it has been a huge honor to play against the son of one of the biggest legends in the history of our sport,” Nadal said about his opponent. “I think he played quite well, he has a future in front so I wish him all the very best.”

Nadal earned the singles title in southern Sweden as a 19-year-old in 2005, and this week is his first time back since then as he prepares for the Olympic tournament on clay at Roland Garros in Paris.

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Nadal was playing his first singles match since he lost in the first round of the French Open to Alexander Zverev. He teamed up with Casper Ruud on Monday to win a first-round doubles match.

While on paper this match may have looked distinctly non-descript, a contest between the world No 261 and a wildcard sitting all the way down at No 461, it was in actual fact an intriguing inter-generational prospect.

Borg, son of six-time Roland-Garros champion Bjorn, would have been well aware that he was playing the man who broke his father’s record at the French Open. Those six title wins on the Parisian clay stood as the most won by a male player until 2012, when Nadal – in the peak of his dominance at Roland-Garros – won his seventh title there.

The match itself was an uneventful affair, with Nadal earning a single break in each set for a comfortable straight-sets victory.

More interesting was the manner in which the Spaniard was moving and playing, having not been in competitive singles action since the end of May. 

He opted to miss Wimbledon in order to prioritize his physical health with hopes of competing in the Paris Olympics at the end of this month, and entered the clay-court tournament in Bastad as a warm-up event in preparation for the Games.

While Nadal will be given sterner tests of his physicality in matches to come, the signs looked promising for the 22-time Grand Slam champion, who moved well and was in impressive form.

Nadal’s 2024 campaign has been severely hampered by injury, with hip and abdominal issues hindering his long-awaited comeback from an 11-month injury lay-off which decimated his season last year.

In May 2023, the Spaniard announced that this year was likely to be his last on tour, although he has repeatedly stressed that he could not commit to a definite retirement date and would not rule out extending his farewell tour into next season.

After Roland-Garros, the Olympics is the next big target for Nadal, having won a gold medal for Spain in 2008. He will play in both the singles and the doubles alongside recent Wimbledon champion and compatriot Carlos Alcaraz.

The 38-year-old Nadal skipped Wimbledon as he didn’t want to switch surface to grass and then back to clay and risk injury. He has been dealing with hip and abdominal injuries over the past 1 1/2 years.

Nadal will next face British No. 2 Cameron Norrie.

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