This is one of the more fun traditions in tennis: winners of the Barcelona Open dive into an on-site pool with the tournament’s ball kids.
Eleven times now, Rafael Nadal has triumphed at the claycourt event, and once again he ran the guard of honour formed by the ball kids and jumped into the pool – next to the centre court named in his honour.
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The ball kids followed, joyfully bombing into the water with the world No.1.
Nadal is now undefeated in his last 19 claycourt matches and has won 46 consecutive sets on the surface, dating back to his quarterfinal loss to Dominic Thiem in Rome in 2017.
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