Rafael Nadal proved to be too good for Nick Kyrgios from a mental point of view in the Beijing final.
The Australian was coming from a fantastic week in Beijing where he defeated Sasha Zverev in straight sets in the semifinal after playing a great match. Nick was 100% focused in repeating the feat against Rafael Nadal also because he was strong of his recent win against the world no.1 in Cincinnati, but that didn’t happen.
Something strange happened to Kyrgios
Things went south (very south) for Kyrgios from the very beginning. In fact, the Australian couldn’t stand a bad call that penalized him when he had a break point against Nadal, and from that moment on Kyrgios wasn’t able to focus. The weird thing is that that call came as early as the first game of the match. Kyrgios kept on shaking his head for the entire encounter thinking about that call, and Rafa took full advantage of it to win the match 6-2 6-1 and conquer his 75th career title (the 6th of this great season).
Rafa won this tournament after he saved 2 consecutive match points against Lucas Pouille in the opener. The Frenchman wasted the first match point after squandering an easy backhand in the net. Then, of course, Rafa was tremendous in recovering from that desperate position to then winning the all thing.
He destroyed me. KYRGIOS
Soon after the match, Kyrgios commented
“He played well. I played terrible. He’s in great form. He just destroyed me today, so it was too good. I put in a pretty good week, had some good wins. It’s tough to find positives when you won three games in the final. But I guess there were positives. In the semi-final I played well, obviously beating Alex.”
FANTASTIC RAFA |
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