Rafael Nadal’s hard luck continued with another loss on the Asian swing as the world No. 2 dropped his Shanghai Rolex Masters opener 6-3, 7-6(6) to Feliciano Lopez on Wednesday evening. Dealing with appendicitis, Nadal served for the second set but eventually succumbed after one hour and 44 minutes of play.
Nadal’s comeback tournament in the wake of a three-month layoff due to wrist problems came last week in Beijing and ended abruptly with a quarterfinal loss to Martin Klizan. His injury-plagued Shanghai campaign never got off the ground. Lopez rolled through the first set without facing a break point and broke back at 3-5 in the second to regain control.
The two-time Shanghai semifinalist advances to a third-round showdown with John Isner, while Nadal is left to rest and gear up for potentially three more tournaments in 2014.
“My thought is to continue with Basel, Paris and London,” he explained. “It’s true that the past few months I did not have the best of luck. I didn’t have the best of luck since Wimbledon. I was playing a good year; very positive year. After that I was unlucky with the wrist (and) what’s going on now. Now there remains three more tournaments for me.”
Federer’s countryman Stan Wawrinka could not avoid Wednesday’s upset bug. The world No. 4 started strong but ultimately succumbed to Gilles Simon 5-7, 7-5, 6-4. Milos Raonic also exited when he retired due to a virus while trailing Juan Monaco 5-2 in the opening set. Kei Nishikori (lost to Jack Sock) and Grigor Dimitrov (lost to Julien Benneteau) also joined the seed exodus out of Shanghai.
“It wasn’t that I had everything under control,” Wawrinka said, trying to explain his loss from being 3-0 up in the third set against Simon. “I was playing good. I did two stupid games (starting) at 3-0. I had the wind with me. I did some bad mistakes. I was rushing a little bit. (It) was not the best day.”
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1 point away from a Fedal exit and Mayer ruins it. Vamos Feli well done.
Oh and did I mention Fedal should retire? Appendicitis really? Obviously not acute.
who?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IjBdnQQ6hm8
This is absolutely terrible. A GS champ doing it of all players! He is no.4 in the world for god’s sake. What a rotten example for the sport
As @hawkeye63 pointed out on another thread, standards have fallen on the ATP…….
I saw the replay of that match and was shocked to see Stan just giving it up. I thought he just let the match totally get away from him in that third set. I really like Simon, but the truth is that all he had to do is keep the ball in play while Stan fell apart.
This guy just keeps getting more black marks as far as I am concerned.
There were two more black marks on his card yesterday. Firstly he kept Simon waiting for ages to go out on court. Secondly he kept barking “towel” at the ball boys without so much as a “please” flinging it back in their face afterwards and complained when they didn’t bring it automatically after every point. He also made a big fuss there weren’t enough clean towels and insisted on having more brought to the court.
#DivaBehaviour
#TowelFetish
As jpacnw pointed out on another thread, Rafa’s handshake worked. (While waiting in tunnel for Stan Wawrinka before the match, Gilles got a handshake from Rafa)
http://ww2.sinaimg.cn/large/005w9zHijw1el3q34rxyig308w0504qp.gif
Rafa should shake the hand of the French DC captain before the final. If the Swiss win the DC we won’t hear the end of it from Fedfans.