The King of (red) clay finally fell on the blue dirt.
It was a (tennis) disaster waiting to happen. Rafa has always been against the new surface and it was all clear that he could fall any moment with any opponent.
THE MATCH
It was Fernando Verdasco to seize the opportunity and defeat his friend for the first time in his career. Nadal wasn’t Nadal and that was obvious. He relies a lot on his movements and he is not exactly a ballerina, like Federer, on the court.
Rafa had problems since the very begining of the match to lose the opening set 6-3. Then he had a Rafa’s come back to win the second set (6-3).
The third set was a real tennis drama. The quality of the match went really down with both players unable to play their usual tennis. There were 7 breaks (!!!) and uncharacteristics mistakes. The biggest one was when Rafa had the easiest smash (1 metre from the net) to squander it like a beginner. (After that Rafa looked down in full shame).
A pivotal moment was when Rafa was leading 5-2 (2 breaks up) in the third set. It was all clear that he wasn’t confident at all to win this match (!!?), he was as nervous as ever to lose his service game. At that point, Fernando’s body language changed drammatically. He sensed the moment and he started to attack at avery single point to trigger lots of errors from Rafa. Eventually Fernando won 5 straight games (3 consecutive breaks).
After the last point Fernando fell on the ground shocked while Rafa was on the net waiting for him hugely upset about the all situation.
That was the first time Verdasco managed to beat Nadal and for him it was like winning a major. Almost in tears he bended on the court to kiss the controversial blue clay.
“After losing so many times against honestly the best player on clay ever, to beat him on clay is the maximum. I don’t have words. I am happy for the win, although it is difficult to hold myself together now. I need to calm down, rest and get ready for the next match.”
THE BLUE CLAY MESS GOES ON
Rafa wasn’t very happy about what happened.
“I couldn’t close out the match at 5-2. He played better than me,” said Nadal, by far the harshest critic of the experimental switch to blue clay. The ATP and the tournament can do what they want, I tried my best, I’ve trained since Thursday. I was as prepared as I could be. I was not good enough to adapt my game to this court. If things continue like this, it will be very sad.”
“Next year this will be one less event for my calendar.” he added.
