Nuno Borges pulled off the greatest feat of his career on Sunday, defeating Bulgarian Grigor Dimitrov, ranked 13th in the world, 6-7, 6-4, 6-2 and 7-6 to qualify for the round of 16 final Australian Open Tennis Championships. . He is the second Portuguese to reach the 4th round of one of the four major tennis tournaments after Joao Sousa in the USA (2018) and Wimbledon (2019). A feat that guarantees you at least a prize of 344 thousand euros.
A few days ago, Nuno Borges himself admitted to the ATP website that “until the age of 16, he was just an ordinary boy playing tennis for fun.” His family had nothing to do with tennis: his father Paulo is a car salesman, and his mother Virginia works in human resources for travel agencies.
Nuno started playing tennis at the age of 6, at the Maia club, and also tried football and swimming, but only at the age of 16 he decided to take tennis seriously. Instead of immediately trying to become a professional, he chose a university in North America. In 2015, he attended Mississippi State University, where he graduated in kinesiology (the science that analyzes movement).
Returning to Portugal, he turned professional in 2019. But it was a turbulent start due to the pandemic and injuries to his left wrist and both ankles. The peak of his career so far has been in doubles, when he won the Estoril Open in 2022 with Francisco Cabral. At the individual level, he has five wins on the ATP Challenge Tour, and before this year he reached the second round in the USA (2022) and Roland Garros (2023).
Having reached the round of 16 of the Australian Open, where he will face Daniil Medvedev (No. 3), Borges already knows that he will rise to at least 47th place in the rankings (he was 69th and his best achievement was 63rd in April 2023).
“Uh…maybe I can beat this…”
Nuno Borges said that he began to believe in victory already in the third set. “I thought, ‘M…maybe I can actually beat this.’ It’s like people say: one game at a time, one set at a time, stay in the game until the end. I continued to test my limits, my opponent’s limits. I know anything can happen in a tennis game and this was a real example of that,” he said.
Nuno Borges said that he began to believe in victory already in the third set. “I thought, ‘M…maybe I can actually beat this.’ It’s like people say: one game at a time, one set at a time, stay in the game until the end. I continued to test my limits, my opponent’s limits. I know anything can happen in a tennis game and this was a real example of that,” he said.
Author: João Moniz
Source: CM Jornal
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