Rafael Nadal wins through blood – Newspaper Kommersant No. 162 (7363) of 09/03/2022

On the fourth day of the US Open, held in New York, 22-time Grand Slam winner and Daniil Medvedev’s main rival in the fight for the title of world number one Rafael Nadal entered the third round. In the course of the meeting with the Italian Fabio Fognini, the 36-year-old Spaniard gave up the first set and lost with a break in the second set, and in the end, when the fate of the match was actually already decided in his favor, he injured his nose with a racket.

The US Open for Rafael Nadal is the second most successful Grand Slam tournament after Roland Garros. From 2010 to 2019, he won it four times. Then, however, the famous Spaniard did not come to New York twice due to the coronavirus pandemic and a leg injury. But now he seems to be in good shape and is clearly aiming to improve his own record for the number of wins in the majors, and at the same time to lead the world ranking, which so far belongs to Daniil Medvedev. The Russian is guaranteed to remain first only if he defends his title. In any other cases, options are possible.

True, it cannot yet be said that this week everything is going smoothly for Nadal. In the opening match, he gave the first set to the little-known Australian Rinki Hijikata, and in the 1/32 final match against the Italian Fabio Fognini, the same thing happened. Of course, 35-year-old Fognini, representing the same generation as the Spaniard, is a talented and very famous player. He has nine titles to his name, he beat Nadal multiple times, including in the third round of the 2015 US Open, and climbed into the top ten for a while a few years ago. Recently, however, Fognini has been losing his position in the rankings, where he now stands 60th. And despite the feat in his opening meeting with Aslan Karatsev, whose husband of ex-US Open champion Flavia Pennetta won back a two-game deficit, he was not quoted very highly against Nadal.

Nevertheless, Fognini started solidly. In the first game, he was able to maintain full concentration and play his ingenious combinations, while Nadal did little. Moreover, Fognini led with a break in the second installment, but with the score 4:2 in his favor, the Spaniard gathered his thoughts, reduced the number of his own mistakes, increased the pressure. And this was enough to organize a fracture.

As a result – 2:6, 6:4, 6:2, 6:1 in favor of Nadal, who won in 2 hours and 43 minutes.

The only unpleasant moment for the Spaniard at the end of the meeting was a ridiculous injury. Trying to deflect a generally not very difficult ball at the very beginning of the fourth game of the fourth set, he bent low and seriously injured his face with the rim of the racket, which momentarily went out of control, bounced off the court and hit Nadal on the bridge of the nose.

The game, to the surprise of the fans, had to be immediately interrupted, as the doctor stopped the bleeding for several minutes. But in order to take advantage of the situation, Fognini no longer had the strength, and soon his opponent confidently brought the matter to victory.

Nadal came to the post-match press conference with a band-aid on his nose. He said that at the first moment it was very painful for him and even the thought of a fracture flashed through him. But this hardly in any way affects the Spaniard’s chances in the next match against another age opponent – his peer Frenchman Richard Gasquet, who lost to Nadal 17 times in a row, and won at least one set against him last time in 2008. In the fourth round, the winner of this match will play with the Argentinean Diego Schwartzman or the American Francis Tiafoe. Both that, and another now hardly apply for much. But in the quarterfinals, Andrey Rublev can go for Nadal – if, of course, he first copes with Canadian Denis Shapovalov, who returned coach Mikhail Yuzhny to his team, and then beats Briton Cameron Norrie, who has been showing good results lately, or young, but hot Dane Holger Rune.

Evgeny Fedyakov