Rafael Nadal's experience at the 2024 Bastad Open nearly ended in the quarter-final, but the 38-year-old dug deep to deliver a signature win against Mariano Navone.
The Spaniard returned to the clay courts at the ATP 250 tournament in Bastad this week, and things went really smoothly for him, until his quarter-final match. The 14-time Roland Garros winner started off his participation in Bastad with a doubles match, which he won.
He then played two singles matches, which he won, and he added one more doubles match win. It was great to see him back to winning ways after the disappointing Roland Garros finish from over a month ago.
Nadal didn't have too much luck with the draw in Paris, taking on Alexander Zverev, but showed some signs of promise in that match. With a few more weeks of practice, he returned with a decent level at the final preparation ahead of the Paris Olympics.
His quarter-final match was very difficult, as he faced Navone, who has been a standout performer on clay this year. He won over 40 matches in each of the past two years on clay, even though they were not Tour-level, and in this match, he nearly won his 27th this year.
Compared to previous years, most of these came on the ATP Tour, which shows his incredible improvement this year. He's inching closer to a Top 20 debut and even won a trophy earlier this year, so he's a challenging opponent on the red dirt.
This match wasn't a very good one for Nadal, but it also had to do with his opponent. Navone jumped out to an early lead in the first set largely because Nadal struggled to keep the ball in play.
He had 15 unforced errors after only seven games of play, which is too many, but he figured out soon how to adjust his gameplan. The Spaniard battled back from down 1-4 to force a tie-break, committing only one unforced error in those five games.
He still didn't play well enough in the tie-break, as Navone won it 7-2. Nadal responded quickly in the second set, taking a 3-0 lead with two breaks, but then lost it, giving Navone a 4-3 lead.
However, he never gave up, proving still to be one of the best fighters on the ATP Tour as he turned that around to win the second 7-5 and force the decider, with nearly three hours of play already in the books.
The decider opened with an early break for the Argentinian, but Nadal once again didn't give up and battled back. After battling back from 0-2 to 2-2, Nadal kept applying pressure on his opponent and actually got the break to lead 3-2.
The match had been going on for over three-and-a-half hours at this point, as neither was keen to give up. At 38 years old, Nadal was battling out there as if this was the final of a Grand Slam, never even thinking about giving up.
The best example of that was the seventh game of the final set, where despite being up a break, Nadal never stopped pushing. He wasted three break points to go up 5-2 but finally converted the fourth one to take a 5-2 lead.
Although he lost one of the breaks in his following service game and another shortly after, the 22-time Grand Slam champion still prevailed and won the match 6-7(2), 7-5, 7-5 in four hours to reach the semi-finals of the 2024 Bastad Open.
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