It is impossible to give of your best in any sport when you are playing with such an element of caution, seemingly bound by the constraints of your own fears and expectation levels.
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While defending champion Djokovic rested after completing his group campaign on Thursday, Nadal slugged it out with Ferrer in a draining baseline battle that lasted two hours and 37 minutes.
But mentally, he wouldn’t enter the clash with the “positive” feelings he spoke of after seeing off two-time grand slam champions Stan Wawrinka and Andy Murray in straight sets earlier in Group Ilie Nastase. Each worked a break chance in the third and fourth games, each survived. It could make this afternoon’s match another one to remember, even if it doesn’t stretch to almost six hours. They changed ends with Murray 4-2 up, only for Wawrinka to storm back with five points to take the set. He started slicing his serves a little wider, putting less of his first serves in play but setting himself up well for the rallies. Ferrer then saved five break points in the opening game of the third set before holding.
The pair had not played since 2013, when Wawrinka had won both their meetings comfortably, and the Swiss was on the verge of a third semi-final in three appearances in London when he broke again for 5-2. Since then, in what has traditionally been his least productive stretch of the season, Nadal has reached the finals in Beijing and Basel, the semis in Shanghai and now London and the quarters in Paris.
It marked the end of Djokovic’s 23-match winning streak and also a 14-match winning streak in London, which dated back to 2011. Cheap ones, as well.
“Maybe for his standard it’s not the best season”.
“With my team sitting behind, I just felt like sometimes when the box is extremely close to the court, I sometimes can find that a distraction”, Murray explained.
“You can feel that he’s starting to get comfortable on the court, starting to play better”. I made too many mistakes.
Earlier, Nadal continued his supreme form in the tournament, beating his Spanish compatriot David Ferrer in three sets to remain unbeaten. And yet they played out the tightest, longest match of the week, 2hrs 37mins, in a cracker of a contest.
Ferrer won a curiously low-key and inconsistent first set on a tie-break after each player had broken the other’s serve on three occasions.
But Nadal would not be beaten, breaking in the ninth game to serve out the win, 6-4. “So that’s something that I would imagine would come back fairly quickly”.
“So for me it was another opportunity for me to compete”. Winning today is nearly like winning a 250 tournament. I fought to made that happen, no?
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So, not only did we fail by the narrowest of margins to land an [8.0] victor, but the no tie breaks wager fell as well for the same reason, which was tough to take, as was the fact that Wawrinka went on to win fairly comfortably. Only a weekend loss by Federer would hand Murray a season-record finish.
