Rafael Nadal and Dominic Thiem are on a collision course for the Barcelona semifinals, a matchup that can become a reality on Friday. Nadal is continuing his campaign against Jan-Lennard Struff, while Thiem faces Guido Pella.
(1) Rafael Nadal vs. Jan-Lennard Struff
Which Nadal will show up for quarterfinal action at the Barcelona Open Banc Sabadell on Thursday afternoon: the dominant King of Clay, the one who got upset by Fabio Fognini in Monte-Carlo and struggled with Leonardo Mayer on Wednesday, or something in between (such as the once who defeated David Ferrer 6-3, 6-3 in the third round)? The second-ranked Spaniard may not be in peak form following a month off due to a knee injury, but he at least managed to reach the Monte-Carlo semis and played well enough against Ferrer on Thursday.
Up next for Nadal is a first-ever meeting with Struff, who is playing without question the best tennis of his career right now. The 51st-ranked German reached the Auckland semifinals and the Indian Wells fourth round, and he has made this Barcelona run at the expense of Hugo Dellien, David Goffin, and Stefanos Tsitsipas. Struff has the prototypical game that can trouble Nadal (6’5”, huge forehand, solid two-handed backhand), but he would obviously prefer to contest this matchup on something other than clay.
Pick: Nadal in 2 losing 8-10 games
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(3) Dominic Thiem vs. Guido Pella
Thiem and Pella will be squaring off for the fifth time in their careers on Friday. The head-to-head series is all tied up at two wins apiece, including 1-1 on clay. Pella once led 2-0 following victories in 2016 (Rio de Janeiro) and 2017 (Chengdu), but Thiem responded by getting the job done twice last season (6-4, 6-4, 6-4 at the Australian Open and 7-6(7), 6-4 in Buenos Aires).
On the heels of his Roland Garros runner-up performance in 2018 to go along with plenty of other impressive results, Thiem was expected to tear up the dirt this season while perhaps underwhelming on hard courts. So far that has not exactly been the case. The fifth-ranked Austrian struggled on the Golden Swing, won the Indian Wells title from basically out of nowhere, and then lost to Dusan Lajovic in the Monte-Carlo third round. Thiem appears to be back in fine form with straight-set victories this week over Diego Schwartzman and Jaume Munar. Pella punched his ticket to the last eight by beating Joao Sousa, Karen Khachanov, and Benoit Paire. The 28th-ranked Argentine may be running on fumes in the aftermath of a Monte-Carlo quarterfinal run, so Thiem should advance.
Pick: Thiem in 2
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thiem in 2! anything else would be a bad result for thiem.
There’s no reason why Pella cant be dangerous in this match. He beat both Khachanov and Paire (in peak form) which is nothing to sneeze at.
Im leaning towards Theim but would not be surprised if he lost.
Theim in 3
Rafa in a fairly easy fashion, and Thiem in 2.
im actually worried now with the price dropping a on thiem , now I feel like a upset might be brewing. so ima make a insurance bet and take pella +4. ML price on dominic just asking for a take and it looks suspect to me lets hope not but if it becomes tight +4 is good value for insurance with pella.
nadal in 2 loosing 5-7 games! he should handle struff easily.
Rafa is always making life difficult for himself. I mean, he’s leading 4-1 or 4-2, why then serves so poorly to lose serve in the next game? In the past, Rafa would not let the lead go away like that, but nowadays, he’s feeling more and more difficult holding serves, even on clay!
He somehow must throw in a poor service game or two in each match, I don’t understand why. He could win the set more comfortably at 6-3 perhaps, but now has to fight to win at 7-5.
Hopefully, he doesn’t lose his serve in the next set and wins it ASAP.
I can’t take it in that we will only see Rafa strutting his stuff a few more times – his final match will come at Roland Garros where it all began for him back in 2005. My greatest hope is he will win one final RG 🙏🏻
Ed, do you have concrete evidence that Rafa is retiring after RG? Or is it just a hunch? Did I miss a big announcement that he’s retiring?? I don’t see how getting married means he can’t play tennis anymore…
Rafa is not planning to retire. He’s planning to play better. He has not denied the report in the Spanish Hello! mag/rag that he’s getting married this fall but he does not comment on it either. Ed is making an assumption.
It’s certainly possible that too many injuries may force him into retirement but he clearly wants to play a couple more years. Rafa’s a fighter – he will not “go gently into that good night”.
Xicsa is not getting any younger and she is at the age when the urge to have a baby excellerates (speaking as a woman who remembers her late twenties and early thirties). If they want to start a family now would be a good time. Rafa has been smart to not try to balance fatherhood, marriage, and parenting with his ambitious and intense approach to tennis. But he probably doesn’t want to wait too long. There may be some overlap of years being a husband and father who is also still winning Slams and masters and his ranking is too good to quit.
That’s my guess.
Much better from Rafa today. Good serving. Struff is a tough player when he’s “on” and he’s been “on” this week. And what a finish!! Vintage FHDTL on the dead run into the corner. Wow!
Some unbelievable shots from Nadal today in tough spots. But if Struff had hit more first serves in, he may well have won this match. He came with exactly the right game plan, and was inches away, with Nadal serving at 4-4 in the first, from taking that game and serving for the 1st set. He has improved massively from the last time I saw him, but still didn’t quite have the self-belief toward the end of the sets to win.
Rafa was near the level of his Ferrer match, apart from his serve, which was better. He wasn’t controlling the rallies, however, and probably won’t against Thiem either. He’ll have to win with consistency and great defense. He may do that in the end, but I think I’d lean toward Thiem at this point.
Why would Rafa need to control the rallies? All he has to do is counterpunch and then forces errors out of his opponents. When he’s facing big hitters, he’ll not try to overpower them, but would absorb their power and forces them to go for too much thus getting errors out of them.
It’s obvious in this Struff match, that Rafa wasn’t trying to overpower him, but was trying to return his big serves with interest. Rafa was as usual, trying to manoeuvre his opponent and forced errors out of his opponent.
Rafa himself had fewer winners than Struff but he also had much fewer UEs too. Had Struff serve better……, well, had Rafa served better he won’t even lost his serve in the first set, and might win the first set 6-3! Had Rafa returned better and took his chances, he would win the second set 6-4. Struff’s serving % was low because he had faced a great returner Rafa; with Rafa hitting those unbelievable return winners, Struff felt pressurised.
Struff is a big bruiser with a lot of confidence right now. I have never considered him to0 dangerous in a draw until now.
Rafa conquered him brilliantly.
Didn’t get to see the Thiem vs Pella match yet.
You are right I it is just a hunch on my part but after following his every move for the past 14 years I’ll eat my hat if I’m not right!! He has many irons in the fire – notably his Tennis Academy but he is also an accomplished golfer
and loves to sail his boat when he gets the chance. However the clearest sign Rafa is heading towards retirement is he will shortly marry his long term girlfriend Ischa later this year – something he he would not have done while he was still playing competitive tennis.
I think you’re right, Ed. They’ve been together forever. Why marry her now unless he was ready to start a new chapter in his life?
Nah, Rafa is getting married this October but that doesn’t mean that he’s going to retire from tennis. He still has the competitive drive and still wants to continue playing tennis.
Imo, it’s when he’s not winning big titles anymore that he may decide to call it a day. From the way he’s playing now, it’s unlikely he’s not going to win big titles!
I even think that if he’s still winning big titles, he may play till 2022!
I’m with you, Lucky. I see absolutely no reason at all for Rafa to retire any time soon. There are only two reasons why I could see him retiring soon- 1.) He is playing through extraordinary pain that we just can’t see because he’s extremely good at masking it. 2.) His repeated injuries/bad knees bring him to a point where it becomes a situation where he won’t be able play with his future children (assuming he wants kids). This scenario is similar to Murray. Murray had the option of getting that surgery that would free him from the pain, but would most likely end his career. With Rafa’s case, I don’t really know if there is any surgery he could get to fix his problems that wouldn’t mean an end for his career. But we really have no idea what kind of lasting damage he has done, and continues to do, to his joints. It could potentially come to a point where his doctor says,
“Rafa, we’ve reached the point where I can honestly say that if you continue to do this to your body, you may not be able to be active in any meaningful way in the future, and simple everyday activities, such as playing with your future children or nieces/nephews, could be difficult.”
And if it does happen to come to that, Rafa would surely retire, as sports are just one aspect of life that aren’t necessarily worth ruining the rest of your life for.
That being said, I don’t think that he will be reaching either of those scenarios anytime soon, if ever. Again, we truly have no idea what the truth is about his body. He naturally has to have gotten great at masking his pain over the years. I guess he question is just how long he is willing to put up with the pain. If I had to guess, I feel like he is probably thinking that if he can just go all out as much as he can in the next 2 or 3 years, he will have the whole rest of his still-young life to recover and live. So unless there is some level of risk of serious long-term damage he is facing that we don’t know about, I see absolutely no reason why he would consider retiring just yet. Serena Williams chose to get married and have a kid before she planned to stop playing (although maybe it wasn’t exactly planned?), so why not Rafa? And unlike Serena, he doesn’t have the burden of having his body go through hell to start a family if he wants.
Sidenote: I have absolutely no evidence of this- it’s just a hunch. But if I had to guess, I feel like Rafa would absolutely kill to win Wimbledon or AO, or both, at least one more time before he retires. AO would obviously give him Career Double Slam, and winning there again would surely mean the world to him after coming so close a few times. And as for Wimbledon, we know how much Wimbledon means to Rafa. Personally, I felt like Rafa’s run at Wimbledon last year was the best I’ve seen him play outside of RG since US Open 2013. He was just amazing to watch. He came so incredibly close to glory there again after quite a few years of disappointment, and I believe that he is going to bring that same fire again this year. If there’s one thing we know about Rafa, almost every time in his career where there was something we were unsure he could do, he ended up doing it. I know that people started to write him off at Wimbledon, but he showed last year that is UNQUESTIONABLY ready to win there again. And I believe he is going to do it. I just have a very strong feeling. When all is said and done, I truly believe he will have more Wimbledon titles, or as McEnroe, Becker, Edberg, etc.- and those guys are viewed as Wimbledon legends! If only because of his recent health struggles on hard courts, I actually think he has a better shot of winning Wimbledon again than AO.
Well said, Kevin.
I got sidetracked by going to deep into my “Sidenote” 😂, but I meant to say that I could see Rafa winning Wimbledon or AO again, and retiring in the press conference afterward. Basically a Sampras “mic drop”. It sure would be a hell of a way to go out! I’ve always thought it would have been cool if Fed retired in his winner’s speech after 2018 AO, and if Rafa and Novak both retired immediately following their 20th slams. It would be almost comic how dramatic that storyline would be. I think it’s the Anti-GOATist in me who just kill for the three of them to end with the same number of total slams, so it would hopefully temper this (imo) pointless and unfair discussion. Although to be honest, it would probably just ignite it even more. 🤪
Nice thought, for the 3 headed GOATs each to end up with the same number of slams. 🙂
Someone asked Rafa recently if catching up with Roger’s slam count was motivation for continuing to play. Rafa sort of looked at him oddly and said no, that he didn’t want more slams because Roger had more, that was not a good way to live. “Should I want more money because someone else has more? Or a bigger house because someone else has one?” (The interviewer did NOT point out that lots of people do think exactly that way.)
Rafa’s regular pain is, I assume, from patellar tendinitis and probably left foot pain from his congenital defect. The “cure” for both kinds of pain is to stop intense athletic activity. The only compelling reason for him to retire is if he simply can’t play enough. He said at the end of 2018 that if he played any less he would “no longer be a professional tennis player”. So I think we can rule out his playing only the clay/grass season and/or the slams.
I’m not going to post about inferences/speculations re Rafa’s domestic life. Clearly he feels it to be a very private matter, not something to share with his fans. I’m feminine enough to not help being interested but there it is…:)
All he has to do when he settles down and has his own children, is to cut down on his playing schedule, thus less travelling. Perhaps, he may just play in Europe, and then the two non European slams.
And why won’t Rafa marry his fiancé now, when she’s not getting any younger, and they may want to have a few children before they get too old to have them.