Star-struck Korda seeks autographed shirt from Nadal

Paris: It’s not often that a tennis player calls being on the wrong end of a 6-1, 6-1, 6-2 Grand Slam result “super awesome” or “definitely the best moment of my life.” It’s also rather rare for a player to go up to the net and ask the guy who just beat him for an autographed shirt.

Sebastian Korda, the 20-year-old American qualifier who lost to Rafael Nadal by the above scoreline in the French Open’s fourth round Sunday, still was beaming afterward.

“Ever since I was a kid, I mean, I was in love with him and everything about him. I would watch every single match. Doesn’t matter who he was playing or what tournament he was playing. He was the guy for me,” said Korda, whose cat is named after the 12-time champion at Roland Garros.

“It was an unbelievable moment for me and I couldn’t have written it any better.”   Imagine how he might have reacted if he’d been in the room for Nadal’s post-match news conference, when this assessment of Korda was offered: “I really predict that he going to have a very good future.”

The 213th-ranked Korda was the youngest American man to make it to the fourth round in Paris since 1991 and made sure to soak up every moment in Court Philippe Chatrier on Sunday, even if wind that kept kicking loose dirt off the clay surface felt “like a tornado, sometimes,” he said.

After feeling tight in warmups, Korda — whose father, Petr, won the 1998 Australian Open and was a finalist at the 1992 French Open, and whose mother, Regina, was ranked in the Top 30 — loosened up and hung in there with Nadal at the outset.