Rafael Nadal he had warned two days ago that he would need to level up to stay alive at the US Open. He tried it in his round of 16 match against Francis Tiafoe, but failed: said goodbye to New York in an even battle and in which, despite his lack of competition rhythm, he had options (6-4, 4-6, 6-4, 6-3).
Nadal also said that the American would be a tough opponent, with a lot of intensity and energy. Y Tiafoe fulfilled the script: physical deployment, electricity in his blows and, also, perhaps less expected, solidity.
The Spaniard managed to keep up the pace while Tiafoe’s arm wasn’t quite hot. Until the seventh game, neither threatened the other’s serve, in a laborious set, carried out until then more by errors than by decisive blows.
But at 3-4, the American got the first break point and took advantage of it the first time, thanks to a mistake by Nadal’s forehand, harassed by the power of Tiafoe. These errors were more and more common. and also the ‘winners’ of the American. Several of them with a sharp backhand, which disabled Nadal’s forehand attacks.
The start was complicated for Nadal at times. The most successful in the ‘greats’ of world tennis looked uncomfortable. He asked for the fan to be adjusted on his chair. That they dry the track, perhaps with the sweat of what it cost him to face Tiafoe. And he celebrated the mistakes of his rival, clenching his fist, to find encouragement in the opponent’s tennis, since he couldn’t find him in his own.
Tiafoe’s serve, in addition, began to carburize. In the game that closed the set, he sent one at 215 kilometers per hour – his fifth ace of the set – and another impossible for Nadal to return. A single break point had served Tiafoe to pocket the set, in which he showed more speed, intensity and confidence than Nadal. He raised his hand to the parish, in the middle of the ovation, and pointed with the index finger down. Here I am, she wanted to say.
The center lived a similar story in the second set. The only thing that changed was the ending. The equality even lasted a little longer, until 4-4, without opportunities to break serve. They were like two fighters who keep their distance, who only mark the opposite.
Nadal took advantage of a mistake by Tiafoe to send him a direct shot to the chin. The American did not hit a ball that came to him backwards and that he believed was out. But he had caressed the line. Nadal, who has a bare butt from situations like this, took advantage of the gift and placed 15-40. They were the first two break points of the set. Tiafoe, perhaps remembering his mistake, he gave away the sleeve with a double fault.
Again, equality lasted until 3-3 in the third set, Nadal and Tiafoe unable to threaten the opponent’s serve. The American finally did it in the next game, which tilted the set, without Nadal being able to react. By then, the Spanish showed signs of tiredness. In the face and in the game. Some balls that he is used to fighting he gave up. It was his fourth match in a week, after spending the summer without competing after the abdominal injury at Wimbledon.
Tiafoe’s hand not only didn’t tremble, it stiffened. He came to place 220 km/h kicks and took the set.
The final episode was different. Nadal orchestrated a bit of a reaction early in the set, with an emotional first game. He lifted a breaking point from Tiafoe and threw his arms into the air, electrifying the crowd and, perhaps, absorbing the energy from him. He was close to getting it. He broke the American and served to make it 1-4. It would have been, maybe another game. But Nada did not take advantage of them. Neither to the next game, with 15-40, and the possibility of placing 2-4 and with service. With the tank half empty, with three long hours of the game in the legs, the match was uphill for him: he conceded four games in a row from Tiafoewho showed physical and mental strength.
“I really don’t know what just happened,” Tiafoe said from the track, which he did not believe his victory. He will have a chance to reach the semifinal of a ‘big one’, where he has never been, if he beats Russian Andrey Rublev on Wednesday.
“There are no excuses,” Nadal said later at a press conference. «There are times that one can do everything and others not. Maybe a little more freshness, filming and tranquility were missing», He assured after a complicated summer, without being able to compete and with the personal complication of the entry at the end of last month of his wife, María Francisca Perelló, who is pregnant with their first child.
Nadal’s farewell does not prevent still have options to place as number one of the world after the tournament. After the defeat of the number, Daniil Medvedev, in the same round, will get it if neither Casper Ruud nor Alcaraz, who played shortly after him, reach the final.
About your future plans Nadal assured that now he will focus on the personal level and not so much in preparation for the following sports challenges: “I have much more important things to attend to: having my first child,” he said.
