Rafael Nadal faced his strongest opposition yet at the 2024 Brisbane International and handled it well for a while but still lost in three sets.
Jordan Thompson was never going to be an easy out for Nadal because the Australian is just a solid player, and he's playing on home soil. Even so, some might say that he did better than anybody expected him to because, at the opening set's midpoint, he broke first.
The problem for Thompson is that he didn't convert that 4-3 lead into a 5-3 one but rather allowed Nadal to break back. That was costly as it energized Nadal who would go on to outplay his opponent for the rest of the set.
7-5 was the final score of the first set as Nadal totalled a solid 12 winners in it. Thompson actually outhit Nadal with 18 winners, but the legendary player's experience proved vital as he won the crucial rallies. The second set was similar, as Thompson kept his level relatively high.
Nadal was finding better solutions than in the first but still came up short. The biggest chance for him to win the match happened at 5-4 in the second set where he fought his way to a match point but couldn't convert it.
It was the 4th missed break chance of that set for the Spaniard, as Thompson also wasted one. In the end, we ended up in a tiebreak where Nadal took an early 3-0 lead. It seemed like that would be enough because he had two match points later in the tiebreak.
He used neither, which was a disaster as Thompson turned it around to win 8-6. That momentum carried over in the final set as Thompson took a 4-1 lead, after which Nadal took a medical timeout for discomfort in his hip. Thompson would finish it off 6-3 in the final set to set the final score of 5-7 7-6(6) 6-3.
Good week for Nadal but not a great match, in many ways.
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