David Ferrer and Novak Djokovic advance to the Abu Dhabi final with respective wins over Rafael Nadal and Jo-Wilfried Tsonga on Friday. Faithful Grandstand follower “nadline28” was on hand to to document the action.
Excerpts from nadline’s 28 comments:
Nadal had a few bad calls at big moments but made far too many errors. I guess Ferrer had the advantage of playing on the court yesterday. Nadal seemed to be mistiming the ball. At his presser he says he is happy with his performance and mentioned the bad call, which could have given him the second set. The line judges were terrible. Anyway, he said his goal is not to win Abu Dhabi but to progressively improve for Australia.
Rafa was asked whether he thought he would be the GOAT if he wins a few more slams, and he said he thinks it’s unfair to determine the GOAT by how many slams they win because slams are only four times a year and there are many more things going on than slams. He said, jokingly, that he might think differently if he had more slams than anyone in tennis history.
Someone asked Rafa at the presser whether he was hungry after the match; he wanted to know what players do immediately after matches. Rafa said he usually has a shower but he forgot his ‘alcohol’ to remove the taping on his finger (left it at his hotel) so he couldn’t have a shower until he got back.
Ferrer was asked what he did differently today to beat Rafa and he said he kept the points short and served well. But he added that Rafa is the best player in the world and he hasn’t been training for very long before coming here while he–Ferrer–has been training for a month. He said he is sure Rafa wasn’t playing at his peak today. Rafa missed other BPs which suggests that he is not overly fussed about playing Djokovic just yet.
The Tsonga-Djoker match was close. Tsonga didn’t play as well as he played against Andy (Murray). Granted, Andy is a bit rusty so that may have made Tsonga look very good…but still Tsonga served very well yesterday; today not so much. There was only the one break in the entire match.
way to go Nadline ! thanks ! enjoyyyy 🙂
nadline and vamosrafa are doing a good job of supplementing Ricky’s efforts to give us fans a grandstand view.
Enjoyed the pics, thanks nadline and Ricky!!!!!