Wimbledon: Nadal Advances To Round Of 16 Without Dropping A Set
July 7, 2017 in Sports News
Rafael Nadal’s overwhelmed 21-year-old Russian Karen Khachanov, to advance to the Round of 16 at Wimbledon. The Spaniard beat him 6-1, 6-4 and 7-6 in two hours and 15 Minutes.
Nadal will now face Luxembourg’s Gilles Muller, who beat him in 2005 in the second round of this same Grand Slam tournament.
The All England Centre Court is good for Nadal. He has already won two games in a row there, with the first one being his victory against Australian John Millman in the opening round.
Nadal has not lost a set since the start of Roland Garros where he won his 10th French Open trophy. That’s a total of 10 straight matches without losing a set (seven in Paris and three in Wimbledon) and totaling 28 for the year.
With this mark, Nadal tied his own record spanning from the quarterfinals of Wimbledon in 2010 to the final of the US Open that same year.
With Spanish golfer Sergio Garcia in attendance sporting the green jacket he won at the Augusta Masters this year, Nadal showed his superiority and enjoyed a relatively easy victory as he won the first four games of the opening set in just 13 minutes by playing aggressively and using his powerful serves to overcome Khachanov 6-1.
Khachanov only once managed to break Nadal’s serve (in the fifth game of the first set to make it 4-1), while Nadal broke the Russian’s serve four times.
Khachanov made things interesting scoring 13 aces in the match (Nadal just had seven), and used them to put up a little resistance, but the Spaniard kept the Russian off-balance the whole match with his drop shots and right-handed passing shots. Despite Khachalov’s best efforts Nadal won the second set 6-4.
As in the match against American Donald Young, he had problems in the third set when he had to save a set point when the Russian was leading 5-4 but recovered to win in the tiebreak in dominating fashion.
Muller had earlier defeated Briton Aljaz Bedene 7-6, 7-5 and 6-4 to set up his match against Nadal.
Muller, 34, ranked 26th in the world, lives the best moment of his career, and arrived to Wimbledon after winning the title at Hertogenbosch and reaching semifinals at the Queen’s Club Championships.