Spanish star Rafa Nadal completes Grand Slams of tennis

New York : Spanish star Rafael Nadal won his first US Open championship on Tuesday defeating Serbian Novak Djokovic 6-4, 5-7, 6-4, 6-2 to complete his career with all Grand Slams in the world of tennis.

The 24-year-old left-hander stunned third seed Djokovic with an uncanny shot making to win the 1.7 million-dollar top prize as well as his third consecutive Grand Slam crown and his ninth Grand Slam title overall.

Nadal, became the 7th tennis player to complete a career Grand Slam sweep, joining Roger Federer, Andre Agassi, Roy Emerson, Rod Laver, Don Budge and Fred Perry in having won Wimbledon and the US, French and Australian Open titles.

Rains pushed the final to Monday for the third year in a row and halted the match for one hour and 48 minutes, but rains only delayed Nadal’s reign on the Flushing Meadows hardcourts despite losing his lone set of the fortnight.

A ninth Slam title moved Nadal alone into seventh on the all-time list, passing Agassi, Perry, Ken Rosewall and Ivan Lendl and moving only seven shy of Federer’s all-time record, three crowns ahead of Federer’s Slam-title pace.

Nadal, third-youngest on the Slam sweep list, would join Laver and Budge as the only men to hold all four Slam crowns at once by winning the 2011 Australian Open.

No Spanish man had won the US Open title since Manuel Orantes in 1975 and the only other Spanish US Open champion was Manuel Santana in 1965.

Not since John McEnroe in 1984 had a left-hander had won the US Open men’s title.