Rafael Nadal, who returned from a two-month layoff due to injury, fell on Thursday to South African Lloyd Harris with 6-4, 1-6, 6-4 sets in the third round of the ATP tournament in Washington. With the win, Harris advanced to the quarterfinals, where he will face Japan’s Kei Nishikori, who defeated seventh-seeded Briton Cameron Norris.
The defeat will have a bitter taste twice for the manacorí. It is that in addition to being eliminated from the contest, he fell one place in the world ranking. Harris seemed, at times, to play the best tennis of his life and Nadal felt the physical wear of the match he played against Jack Sock for more than three hours and with a pain in his foot that had him to abuse.
The manacorí lost 455 points and was surpassed by Stefanos Tsitsipas, who positioned himself in the best ranking of his career. With this result, the Top 3 is left with Novak Djokovic in the lead, followed by Daniil Medvedev and the Athenian. An atypical list if one takes into account that it does not have two of the three members of the “Big 3” after four years and three months.
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