In tennis two days can be light years. In 48 hours you can go from anguish to peace, from suffering to comfort. And it’s the road you’ve traveled Rafael Nadal in the US Open. This Saturday, the Balearic regained all calm and the game that had been abandoned on Thursday against Fabio Fognini and he gave himself a ride before Richard Gasquet for, in two and a quarter hours and with a 6-0, 6-1 y 7-5 be placed in round of 16 of the New York tournament, a round where the American will be measured on Monday Frances Tiafoe.
On the Arthur Ashe track, a radically different Nadal was seen from the one that came out on Thursday against the Italian. At no time was there any sign that anything, physical or mental, weighed or distressed him. And she settled with surgical efficiency and with an ioverwhelming fool, the procedure before Gasquet, a veteran player like him, with whom the man from Manacor has a good friendship but also a devastating record.
acquaintances since adolescence, Nadal has beaten the Frenchman in their 18 meetings, more than any other player. It is also the same number of times Novak Djokovic He has prevailed in his meetings with Gael Monfils, but in the case of Gasquet he has not even scratched a set in the duel with Nadal since 2008. And it should not be easy for the man from Béziers to go out and face the Balearic with the record that dragging behind him, although the effort he tried in the third set speaks of his dignity.
raise the bar
Nadal was satisfied. believes that what happened on thursday with “an excessively low level”, it was “a little abnormal” for the way he competed. He was “determined not to repeat and he clearly got it. And in fact, learning quickly from what happened, he came out “mentally and tennis stronger.”
The match against Gasquet, added to the two sets with which he saved the pothole against Fognini, is key for him. Because what helps him “is playing well.” And each round passed, after time with good training but in need of competitive matches, and good feeling on the trackis the combination you need to continue to have options to “face the second week with options to raise the level”.
Tiafoe
The next step in that climb has to be taken against Tiafoe, “a great player, charismatic, with a lot of passion, a lot of energy and very fast”. And he knows that it will be an important test, because Nadal knows that the 24-year-old American, with whom he measured himself twice in 2019 and who he beat on both occasions, including the quarterfinals in Australia of that year, has improved and gained experience,
Own Tiafoe He arrives with the mentality that it is possible to beat the owner of 23 majors, a four-time champion in New York. “I’m a different player than 2019 and I’m playing much better,” he said after qualifying from Maryland. “Ci think i can beat him now (to Nadal), definitely I’m going to go for him”.
