Rafael Nadal may not be at his very best… but he is still the world no.1!
The King of Clay had the very difficult task to counter an in-form Grigor Dimitrov. The Bulgarian is playing a magnificent tennis, but from a mental point of view is still not even close to Rafa (who else is ?). Nadal was also heroic in playing with his left hand completely plagued by blisters.
Grigor had a clear upper hand in the first set, but he couldn’t cope mentally with Rafa in the following three. The key part of the match was the last part of the third set. Grigor was unable to convert a set point on Rafa’s serve to then squander other 2 set points in the tiebreak (1 on his serve). The fourth set? Well Dimitrov just imploded by the disappointment to have missed so many chances.
Rafa: I didn’t serve well
Nadal wasn’t pleased with his tenis also because his serve was not up to the task (the blisters may have played a big role) “I served slower. I served bad. I was able to win a match against a very difficult opponent, so that has much more value than when everything is great. And because of these victories, sometimes it happens that the next day you are able to play much better, and these victories at the end of the year are more important than the days that you are playing great.”
Dimitrov: I am very disappointed
Grigor was rather upset for wasting so many opportunities to comment “Of course I’m deeply disappointed. I’m not going to lie. But at the end of the day I have to take the positives and the negatives out of the match and just kind of move on. I’m happy with the situation at the moment. All the credit to Rafa. I think he played a great match. Also his physicality came over towards the end of the match. He’s not one of the best; I think he is the best player right now. Hopefully we’re going to have more battles in the future together.
“I think I still have a long way to go out there and I need to improve. I need to improve every day. I felt that these two weeks, even though I haven’t played my best tennis throughout the whole weeks, I still felt I’ve improved.”
The semis vs. Federer!!!
Rafa will play Roger Federer in the semifinal. Head to head is 22-10 for Rafa that has won the last 4, but you know what? This time Roger has a real chance to beat him as Rafa is really struggling with his left hand and Federer is playing really well!
