The 59th match between Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic was a great spectacle as the Spaniard won the match in four sets despite being the underdog.
Only a few times during his career, Rafael Nadal was not a favourite when entering the court at the Roland Garros and in the quarterfinal match against Novak Djokovic this year, it was one of the cases. Yet, the 21-time Grand Slam champion showed why he's a great champion and defeated his biggest rival.
Since the match was played during a night session, the Spaniard should have had a slight disadvantage but the match started going incredibly well for Rafael Nadal already in the first game of the match. He broke the very first service game of his opponent and added another break later on to win the first set 6-2 in 51 minutes.
It seemed that he might close the match sooner than expected as he had already a double break lead in the second set. The Spaniard was up 3-0 and 30-15 but Djokovic showed probably his best tennis and eventually won the set 6-4 after breaking Nadal 3 times.
The third set was once again dominated by the 13-time Roland Garros champion. Nadal started the set with a 7-point winning streak and he broke his opponent twice in this set as well and won it identically to the first one, 6-2.
Everything indicated that Djokovic will level the score once again as the Serbian led already 5-2 in the fourth set and was also serving for the set in the next game. However, two setpoints were not enough for the world number 1, as Nadal forced the tie-break where he prevailed to set up the semifinals with Alexander Zverev.
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