Tomas Berdych will get another shot–whether he wants it or not–against Rafael Nadal on Friday in Madrid. A semifinal spot is at stake, with the winner to face an unseeded opponent in either Roberto Bautista Agut or Santiago Giraldo.
Rafael Nadal and Tomas Berdych will be squaring off for the 21st time in their careers when they collide in the quarterfinals of the Mutua Madrid Open on Friday.
It is one of the most well-documented head-to-head histories of the current era on the ATP Tour. Berdych’s 3-17 record against Nadal is not historically bad, but he has lost an incredible 16 in a row since leading 3-1 following the 2006 campaign. The Czech once won this matchup in Madrid, but that was back when the event was held on indoor hard courts. Nadal has taken 14 of the last 15 sets from Berdych dating back to the 2012 Australian Open. They were supposed to face each other earlier this season in the Miami semis, but the underdog withdrew due to illness.
Nadal has had no trouble so far this week as he hopes to bounce back from consecutive quarterfinal losses in Monte-Carlo and Barcelona. The top-ranked Spaniard destroyed Juan Monaco 6-1, 6-0 before taking care of Jarkko Nieminen 6-1, 6-4 on Thursday. He is now 27-5 for the year, which includes titles in Doha and Rio de Janeiro.
Speaking of lopsided head-to-heads, Berdych kicked off his 2014 Madrid campaign by once again hammering Kevin Anderson, against whom the world No. 6 is now 11-0. He followed up that 6-1, 6-4 victory with a much more impressive 3-6, 6-3, 6-2 scalp of Grigor Dimitrov in the third round. Berdych’s 26-6 record is highlighted by a triumph in Rotterdam and a semifinal performance at the Australian Open. He finished runner-up to Carlos Berlocq last week on the clay courts of Oeiras.
“He’s a very dangerous player on every single surface,” Nadal said of his opponent. “Here even more with the altitude. The ball flies very fast and his serve is very difficult to break. My goal is to try to be aggressive. I know that to play against him I can’t leave many spaces on the court. If he strikes the ball in comfortable positions, I’m nearly dead, because he has a really high ball speed.”
It is true that the altitude will help Berdych, but the surface will not allow him to replicated what transpired in Madrid eight years ago. Although the sixth seed’s flat firepower will present a much sterner test than anything Monaco or Nieminen brought to the table, the mental block of his past failures against Nadal will be too much to overcome.
Pick: Nadal in 2 losing more than 8 games
[polldaddy poll=8031895]
Leave a Reply