David Goffin finished runner-up at the Japan Open last fall. He certainly did not mind that the man who deprived him of the title, Nick Kyrgios, took his talents to Beijing this time around.
With Kyrgios facing Nadal in the China Open championship match, Goffin went up against Adrian Mannarino on Sunday afternoon and went one step farther in Tokyo than he did in 2016. The 11th-ranked Belgian got over the hump for the biggest title of his career, beating Mannarino 6-3, 7-5 to add 500 rankings points to a total that already had him in World Tour Finals contention. Goffin won 80 percent of his first-serve points, 71 percent of his second-serve points, and 58 percent of his second-serve return points to break the Frenchman on three occasions.
After one hour and 23 minutes, Goffin lifted his second winner’s trophy in the span of eight days–having triumphed last week in Shenzhen.
“It’s a really special trophy for me, as I won the tournament last week and now have again today,” Tokyo’s No. 4 seed explained. “It’s a special feeling at a tournament I like. I have a lot of happy memories in Tokyo. It’s difficult to describe my feelings. It’s important for me to stay fresh physically and mentally with potentially the ATP Finals ahead and then playing for Belgium in the Davis Cup final. I am ready fight and I want to keep winning.”
Winning, winning, and more winning has also been the name of the game for Rafael Nadal in recent weeks. Like Goffin, the reigning U.S. Open champion continued to rack up titles as he crushed Kyrgios 6-2, 6-1 in Sunday’s Beijing final. Nadal saved all four of the break points he faced and benefited from a poor serving performance by Kyrgios, who put in a mere 48 percent of his first deliveries and double-faulted five times.
“He played well; I played terrible,” Kyrgios stated. “He’s in great form. He just destroyed me today, so it was too good. I put in a pretty good week, had some good wins. It’s tough to find positives when you won three games in the final. But I guess there were positives. In the semifinal I played well, obviously beating [Alexander Zverev].”
Nadal is now almost 2,000 points clear of Roger Federer at the top of the rankings and has a 2,360-point lead in the race to year-end No. 1.
Beijing highlights:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OkANkhu0gq8
Goffin interview:
Leave a Reply