Rafael Nadal and Casper Ruud continued their solid play at the 2024 Bastad Open, and with another win, they booked the semi-final at the ATP 250 event.
The two opted to play doubles in Bastad, likely to help Nadal prepare for the upcoming Olympics, where he'll play doubles with Carlos Alcaraz. They comfortably won their first match at the event and continued that in the quarter-finals with another solid performance.
Nadal won his singles matches in the meantime, while Ruud was shockingly stunned in his first singles match at the tournament by Thiago Monteiro. This one was a solid performance from the ‘Ruudal’ team, as it started well by them keeping the serve intact against Roman Safiullin and Theo Areibagr.
Eventually, towards the end of the set, Ruud and Nadal got a chance to break, and they took it to make it 5-3 before eventually winning the set 6-4.
Ruud and Nadal did really well despite struggling to hit the first serve. Despite hitting it at a low clip, the team won the opening set without allowing a single break point. On return they mostly focused on the second serve where they won the majority of points and that was enough to win the set.
The second set didn't open that well for the wild card team, because they fell behind 0-3 after throwing away a 30-0 lead on their serve. That was the first bad moment for them in the entire match. Still, they bounced back quickly, as they broke back to make it 3-3.
The serve was still a problem for Nadal and Ruud, so they dropped it once more, ultimately losing the second set 3-6. A match tie-break followed, and it was very exciting for the crowd in the Swedish city.
Ruud and Nadal took the first mini-break to lead 4-2, but they lost it shortly after that. They broke their opponents’ serve once more, but once again, they lost the advantge. After a lot of battling, Nadal and Ruud won the match tie-break 12-10, saving a match point in the process and converting their second to reach the tournament’s semi-final.
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