Great shot, no doubt. But there were quite a few Rafa winners in the match which I thought were simply unbelievable. I recall a few beautiful DTL forehands in the final set, some BH CC in the second and some shots in this same game too.
This one had the crowd roaring more because Victor was struggling but fighting back. Crowds love that!
That and also because it's a fantastic shot on its own.
Rafa was pulling him off the court with his wicked TS and expecting a winner/unreturnable/weak return for him to put the ball away to the open court.
Not. From outside the tramline, Victor roared loudly and pulled off a Federesque CCBHPS which Rafa could do absolutely nothing about.
That's actually very Rafa-like if you think about it. You corner him to the limit and he strikes back with interest/ridiculous shots.
Score line aside, until that point, Rafa had been pummelling his OHBH in those CC exchanges over and over again and you lost count how many times Victor couldn't take it anymore and dumped the ball to the net. So that's also a "moral winner" as well.
Bottom line, I singled out that point in my agreement with your comment, that Victor is such a fighter. He refused to be served a bangel and got himself a chance to break the world number 1 with it when he's struggling to close out the set. And
imo it's the best shot of the match.
Rafa had quite many great points himself of course but most of the time he was the one in charge. He wasn't under attack or pressure. Victor indeed passed him 3 times in this match IIRC including the one mentioned above. Rafa only had this one to his name, and in this case apparently less is more:
Btw, this is what I was taking about:
