"Nadal didn't give me any space, I felt that a lion was coming" - Cerundolo recalls Wimbledon walk out

The second highest-ranked Argentinian, Francisco Cerundolo recently faced Rafael Nadal at the 2022 Wimbledon and he gained a lot of experience from the match.

It was a first match against a player from Big Three for Francisco Cerundolo and it was on the biggest stage possible, the Centre Court at Wimbledon. Rafael Nadal was in the All England Club to win his 23rd Grand Slam title and he was showing it from the very first minute of their first-round clash. In a recent interview with La Nacion, the Argentinian said:

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"It was a nice tournament, there were no points, what better than that. We started to warm up and at one point I grabbed my cell phone, went on Twitter and boom! I see Cerúndolo-Nadal. I said: 'Well, Rafa touched me'. In those days, from the draw on Friday to the game on Tuesday, I was eager to get on the court and play."

"Half an hour before the game I started to feel nervous. And since I walked from the locker room to the court, passing through the internal corridors, I felt that Rafa was walking [behind me], that he was sighing in my ear. I felt that a lion was coming," Cerundolo said.

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"We were a few meters from the entrance, I psyched myself up and said: 'I'm going in to kill or I'm going to have a very bad time'. Since I stepped on the grass, I thought: 'Look where I am. I went into party mode and my nerves went away. If I [hadn't done] that, I would've lost 6-1, 6-1, 6-1."

"You enter the locker room and the first locker is his. So every time you walk in, you see it. Later, when we were outside the locker room waiting for the security to take us to the court, I walked first and he followed, but he did, I swear…, on my heels," Cerundolo said. "[Nadal] didn't give me any space. It's terrible."

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