Nadal, who won the singles gold in Beijing and skipped the 2012 London Games due to a knee injury, will play Argentina’s Juan Martin del Potro in a semi-final clash on Saturday.
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Kei Nishikori, of Japan, returns to Andy Murray, of England, during their semi-final round match at the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Saturday, Aug. 13, 2016.
Rafa Nadal added the Rio 2016 men’s doubles to his already glittering tennis trophy haul after an injury-ravaged season.
Romania’s Florin Mergea and Horia Tecau (silver winners), Spain’s Marc Lopez and Rafael Nadal (gold winners), and USA’s Steve Johnson and Jack Sock (bronze).
“Juan Martin s played great here and has lots of confidence after beating Novak and he had a great win against Stan Wawrinka at Wimbledon”, said Murray. “I think it honestly is my favourite place to go when I want to go to the beach or see family”. “The atmosphere was tough too, but at the same time I enjoyed it”.
Nadal admitted that “things have gone really, really well”.
The 14-time major champion dropped his first service game in lackluster fashion, and the immediate thought was that the heavy schedule might finally be getting to him.
Murray has won 10 of 12 ATP sets against the Japanese No.1, with his only loss coming at the World Tour Finals in 2014.
The first big moment came in the second game when del Potro survived a ten-minute game to hold, saving a break point and leveling the set at 1-1. If you look into the most recent match ups, Del Potro prevailed on a very fast hard court in the Shanghai Masters in their last match in 2013. Last evening’s final was a battle from start to finish.
Third-set tie-breaks were introduced for these Games and Del Potro was never behind, clinching victory on his second match point when Nadal hit a forehand wide.
That’s two comebacks for Murray after Fognini also had him by a break in the third. There was no better example than when Del Potro broke late in the set to give himself a chance to serve for the match, only for Nadal to break right back. At 30-40, he ripped a forehand victor to break the Spaniard’s serve for a 2-1 lead. She beat two-time Wimbledon champion Petra Kvitova of the Czech Republic 6-4, 1-6, 6-3, and will face Angelique Kerber of Germany, the Australian Open champion who defeated Madison Keys of the US 6-3, 7-5.
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Murray will face the victor of a match later on Friday between Japan’s Kei Nishikori and Gael Monfils of France.
