Rafael Nadal has just finished the duel with the giant John Isner (2.08), but victory (6-3 and 6-1, in 1h 16) is not enough for him. In the direction of the goal net to shake hands with his rival, the Balearic looks down on his bench and the instruction to Francis Roig, the coach who is accompanying him these days in the Foro Italico, is clear: “Ask for a hint. Hint…”. The Spaniard doesn’t want to lose a second, knowing full well that his body and his game require more filming and that next season’s stumbling block, Canadian Denis Shapovalov, will climb another level.
He completed the game with a right hand but the drive cost him a wake up. For more than half an hour, the master punch didn’t finish the carburizing; Actually, nothing that I hadn’t thought about beforehand, because a month and a half in reserve is a long time, and the automatisms take time to return. After appearing again last week at Madrid’s Caja Mágica – a rather tricky scenario as the height makes it very difficult to control the ball – the 21-time champion looks to Rome for the boost needed to watch with flying colors to get to Roland Garros.
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“My body is like an old car, it needs time to restart,” he explained upon arrival in the Italian capital after losing to Carlos Alcaraz in the quarter-finals. “I’m almost 36 years old, I’m not 19 anymore, so it always takes time to recover. But I’m happy to be here, a place I love and have so many incredible memories of,” said the Manacor native, who has 10 titles and 69 wins at the tournament, his second most successful Masters 1000 after Monte Carlo (11/73). He has triumphed in three of the last four editions and is defending the throne.
Nadal starts off on the right foot again, but the clash with Isner (37 years old, 27th in the ATP) shows that we still have a lot of work to do. The North American had two chances to level the match in his favor in the first set, but first he spat the ball into the corridor and then was exhausted trying to find a winner. The pardon costs him dearly. Immediately afterwards, the Spaniard, who didn’t let go of his arm quite well and got stuck on the first serve, thanks him for another gift – a very clear volley that stays in the net – and chains with a partial 9:1 to make it into the round of 16.
“I finished better than I started, there’s no doubt about that. The beginning was not good for me. He had options on the rest, they weren’t very difficult balls and he failed, but the matter was in his hands. Then I was lucky and could break. I made another one at the beginning of the second and everything changed,” reconstructs the world number four, who made only nine mistakes and rounded off an ode to regularity this week: There are already 800 among the top 5 built the Circuit, a shift he first achieved 17 years ago.
“I’m not in the shape I was in earlier this year because I haven’t touched a racquet for six weeks, I recalled the day before. “It wasn’t easy but I’m trying to give myself the opportunity to play well in Rome and of course to be ready for Roland Garros. Now I gamble for nothing but my luck; a At my age, I’ve had what is probably the best start to the season of my career, so it wouldn’t be fair to complain,” said Nadal, who was quoted with Shapovalov this Thursday and could face Serbian Novak Djokovic in a hypothetical semi-final.
Last year the Canadian (23 years old, 16th and left-handed) forced him to come back in Rome and even had two chances to end the game. Nadal escaped, who also had to squeeze in this season’s Australian Open quarterfinals; On that occasion, Shapovalov managed to lead the pulse through to the fifth set despite starting with two sets against each other, but the Spaniard responded. The one from Manacor survived and this victory was a turning point towards the fate already known.
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