Rafael Nadal is one win away from a potential U.S. Open showdown against Roger Federer. Standing in Nadal’s way of the quarterfinals on Monday is Philipp Kohlschreiber.
Rafael Nadal and Philipp Kohlschreiber will be squaring off for the 11th time in their careers at the ATP level when they clash in round four of the U.S. Open on Monday night.
Nadal is dominating the head-to-head series 9-1, including 5-0 on hard courts. Kohlschreiber’s lone victory came in their only grass-court encounter last summer in Halle, just after Nadal had captured a seventh French Open title (the German prevailed 6-3, 6-4). They most recently faced each other this spring on the clay courts of Monte-Carlo, where Nadal cruised 6-2, 6-4.
Normally a fast hard court would be thought of as a decent surface for Kohlschreiber in this matchup, but not so at the moment. Nadal is undefeated on hards in 2013 with titles in Indian Wells, Montreal, and Cincinnati. The second-ranked Spaniard is not looking back in New York, with straight-set victories so far this fortnight over Ryan Harrison, Rogerio Dutra Silva, and Ivan Dodig.
Many expected this to be a rematch of the Cincinnati final between Nadal and John Isner, but Kohlschreiber put an end to that talk on Saturday. Following wins over Colin Altamirano and Edouard Roger-Vasselin, the world No. 25 took out Isner in a fourth-set tiebreaker. Kohlschreiber is now a solid 26-17 for the season.
This may be Nadal’s toughest test of the tournament to date given Kohlschreiber’s form, but Nadal’s heavy topspin should wear down his opponent’s one-handed backhand before things get too interesting.
Pick: Nadal in 3 losing 11-13 games
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Chris Evert is talking heresy:
RT @unseededlooming: “Roger needs to be tougher. He needs to be like Spanish players. He needs to grind.” #shitchrissiesays”
Would loooooove to hear what @chr17 has to say about the above……………….
……that would be @chr18 of course………..
No, that would be chr21. Lol
Chris Evert was the original grinder. She never forayed beyond the baseline and wouldn’t know what a drop shot from a volley.
Guys, did you notice Gasquet went through a 5-setter, in brutal conditions, without suffering cramp like he usually does? This is a good omen, I hope this is a sign of better physical conditioning on Gasquet’s part, he is too good a talent……..
The espn commentators said that Gasquet has been working hard to improve his fitness. I think it paid off in this match. I was amazed to see him still going strong in that fifth set. It was Raonic who had nothing left in the latter part of the fifth set. These tall guys with the big serves always seem to have fitness problems.
I was very happy to see Gasquet get this win. They switched away from Rafa’s match for the fourth set tb. It’s a good thing that I didn’t have a real favorite in this match. I do think Raonic had at least one match point in that tb. Gasquet squandered a few set points before finally getting it done at 11-9. Then they went back to Rafa’s match.
Thanks @nny. So it can be done, improving one’s fitness I mean. Then why do people snipe and throw innuendo at Rafa when clearly he dedicates a lot of his time to fitness?
Maybe that win will restore some of Gasquet’s confidence .Lack of self-belief is his worst enemy. The H2H against Ferrer is not promising but H2Hs have not counted for a lot so far in this tournament so anything could happen – particularly as Daveed has cooled off a bit since his stellar 2012 year.
Did anybody watch the WaWa-Baggy match. Stan very nearly came unstuck and was none too pleased the crowd got behind the charismatic Baggy who repaid their support with his hilarious celebrations after winning several key points.
ed,
I think they briefly switched to that match but not for long. So I only saw a little bit. Baggy can be quite the character on court. I could see the crowd getting behind him.
Rafa’s post-match interview on September 2 (full transcription)
http://rafaelnadalfans.com/2013/09/03/an-interview-with-rafael-nadal-monday-september-2-2013-us-open-kohlschreiber-federer/
Rafa says he couldn’t play well from the baseline in the first set. Later, he changed his position – he started to play more inside the court. His serve worked well – ‘my serve is working just amazing!
Excerpts:
—Q. It was a tough battle out there until the end. What were the sensations and what wasn’t working as well as you wanted it to?
RAFAEL NADAL: I think in the first set I didn’t feel that I had the control of the points from the baseline. When I was serving, was okay. I didn’t have a lot of problems with my serve during the whole first set. But when I was returning, I thought I need to play a little bit more aggressive with my background and with my forehand. I was thinking about that. But then when I was hitting the ball, I was not able to do it. Is true that I had an amazing opportunity with the 6-5, Love-40. I had to win that set there. But even like this, in the first set when I was returning, I felt that I should do more.
Q. When you talk about the conditions, you mean the humidity?
RAFAEL NADAL: Very hard tonight.
Q. About the humidity, how tough was it? People were sweating buckets of water essentially. How do you adjust to that? How much time does it take to recover?
RAFAEL NADAL: I don’t know for how much, but I need to be ready in one day and a half, so… That’s what I going to try. That’s all. Is not easy to play during these days. Is very uncomfortable. Is very tiring. That’s why I felt when I lost the first set, you know, first set was very important in these kind of days. Then you are in trouble, because physically you can have lower moments in days like today. When you are one set against, you can have a mistake and then lose another set, then the match gets completely crazy and anything can happen, no? I was losing too much opportunities today with the return. Finally I had the chance to made it in the second set. I played a good point, and I did. And after that, I was able to play little bit better. I was returning more inside the court, and I changed the position a little bit during the match. I played more inside the court. In the beginning, I felt he opened the court very good with his backhand against my forehand. The same thing against my backhand with his forehand. I was out of position too much times, no? Playing more inside, I was able to change that situation. —
Relaxed, happy and funny Rafa: “My serve is working just amazing!”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZqH__hMS9I
—Q. To have not lost your serve all tournament is quite remarkable. What about your serve do you feel is working well? What are you pleased about the way your serve is going?
RAFAEL NADAL: My serve is working just amazing (smiling). I think I didn’t lose the serve because I played good points from the baseline. Today I didn’t lose my serve because I was very lucky that Philipp had a big mistake with his match in the first game of the fourth. That’s why I didn’t lose my serve. Anyways, is a good new. Four matches without losing the serve is great. I don’t want to lie you. Happy for that. But I felt at the beginning today I didn’t serve my best. But then in the next sets, I am very happy the way that I served. I was able to win a lot of points and I start a lot of points in a good position.—
Saw the Eurosport replay of the Fed match in the wee small hours this morning. Felt a bit foolish having said earlier yesterday that Robredo would not trouble Federer for more than a game or two 🙁
His renaissance at Cincy was pretty short-lived, no?
I actually felt sorry for him. He clearly could not believe what was happening and you could see him visibly deflating game by game.
ed,
Having seen it live I can understand where you are coming from. Can you imagine watching this unfolding in front of your eyes? I thought that I was dreaming. I remember when Robredo won the first set, I thought well at least he will give Fed a tough match and maybe wear him down for Rafa. I never thought at that point that he would win. When he won the tb, you could hear a pin drop in the stadium. It was that quiet. I think the whole crowd was in complete shock.
I know about feeling foolish, but to be honest no one saw this coming. No one could have predicted this result. Winning in straight sets? I kept waiting for Fed to turn it around, but once he lost the second set I thought it really was over.
I think Cincy was a one-off. That’s what I think now after seeing this loss. It was best two out of three and that’s where you have a better chance to beat a tough opponent. Also I think he caught Rafa off guard with some different tactics. But in a slam, I realize now that there is no way Fed could stay with Rafa in a best three out of five set match.
I did have mixed feelings as I watched the match. In the third set, that’s when I felt a little sorry for him. It was quite embarrassing. Even the espn commentators were at a loss for words. He seemed to be resigned to losing. I had the distinct feeling that he just wanted to get off the court.
I don’t think even Robredo thought he had a chance to beat Fed. He seemed surprised. But he kept it together and stayed strong. He was so happy after the match in his on court interview. He looked like a little boy instead of a 31 year old guy who has come back from some tough times.
I really don’t think that Rafa and Fed will ever play at the USO. I think it was this year or never.
It was late here and they were only showing Robredo-Federer, Gasket/Raonic on Europsport (it’s called Eurosport but they just show French players), so I watched Rob/Fed and couldn’t believe my eyes.
Fed,in his presser, mildly gives credit to Robredo but also says that he (Robredo) just did the usual thing – I don’t agree with him there. Robredo was adamant and full of self-belief in his defense yesterday, he closed out many games with aces, that tells a lot.
But Fed… no offense but his game is all over the place, very erratic. Agressive as ever but just all over the place.
Then, when it was over (relatively quick) they finally switched to Nadal/Kohl and I watched the first set – by then it was 2h30 AM and just didn’ have it in me to continue watching.. first thing I did in the morning was check the score though …. and was very relieved and happy about the evolution and result of the match.
Vamos Rafa!
Here’s what I do not u dear stand about Fed: in the buid-up to this match he was so confident and in fact, I read one tweet from a regular tennis blogger saying she wished she could have Fed’s confidence just for a day. Post this match it turns out he lost because he lost confidence, heis short on confidence. Which is which, is he confident or not? Was that pre match “confidence” just bluster? If so, why?
Another thing, why is he still hanging on to Annacone? Fed’s net rushing was frankly embarrassing and smacked of desperation. That’s Annacone’s footprint right there. Fed is a baselines, that’s what made him beat Robredo all these years, that’s what earned him 17 Slams. It’s not about rushing the net, it’s WHEN you rush the net and Fed is plainly clueless in this regard. Compare his net play to Rafa’s. I tell you, Rafa is the most intelligent volleyer out there. He knows WHEN to come in.
Lastly, Fed needs to get down and dirty, he needs to grind. It is no accident that 3 Spaniards are through to the quarters. They grind.
Fed needs to fire Annacone and hire a Spanish coach.
I did read some of the post-mortem on tennis-x. I wanted to see how the Fed fans reacted over there. I think some of them are in their own kind of denial. Someone who I will not name, said that Robredo did nothing except wait for Fed to make another mistake. That is absolute nonsense! What about the aces he hit to hold his serve at critical points in the match? Shireling made that point very well. Also about Robredo’s positive attitude and self belief. He went out there to make this a match and seemed to have a game plan. I did not see him just standing back and waiting for Fed to make errors. Why would he take that for granted? Who knew in advance how poorly Fed would play? Robredo took his chances and capitalized on his opportunities. He deserves credit for this win.
I think the problem is that Fed is 32 and now in the twilight of his career. It doesn’t matter if he keeps Annacone or gets someone else. It was always going to happen, but I was just never sure exactly when. So now we see it happening. Great champions lose their mental strength and then their game starts deteriorating little by little. The Fed fans who think it’s just mental with him are simply wrong. They should go watch some of his matches when he was in his prime and they would see the difference in the quality of his game.
this Hewitt-Youzhny match is epic
Rafa lost a lot of fluids and electrolytes with all that sweating. I hope Maymo steps up and does what is needed to get Rafa ready for T-Rob because let’s be honest, T-Rob was hardly tested yesterday, was he?
The reason Rafa’s excessive sweating makes me nervous is it reminds me of that Australian Open where he was sweating buckets and his body broke down in the match against Ferru……………
Are you talking about the 2011 AO when Rafa was attempting the Grand Slam? I don’t recall excessive (by his standards) sweating. All I remember was how forlorn he looked as his chance to go for the GS went up in smoke because of the groin injury and how
he refused to retire and soldiered on in spite of entreaties from Uncle Toni to do so.
@RITB
Fed’s game was always about movement and speed round the court. Isn’t it just that he’s slightly slower than he was and in consequence is not timing the ball like he used to. Hence shanking. Dunno if he will be able to adjust or not, but doubt if he can “recapture the first fine careless rapture.”
And surely regarding confidence, isn’t the problem for Fed is that his opponents now have a lot of confidence AGAINST him!
Feel sad actually, he sure played a “beautiful game” for me anyway.
@deucy, yes Fed has slowed down but so has Rafa, it’s a natural ageing process, he is not the only one slowing down. The problem with Fed is: he is slowing down and adopting the wrong tactics. The ageing process does not seem to have affected Robredo’s sharpness, shot placement and general court savvy, why is Fed’s? I like ed251137’s characterisation: he seems to have lost his lucidity. Compare this: Rafa was up 40-0 on Khol’s serve at one point and lost a bunch of BPs as a result of points won by Khols, not lost by Rafa. When Fed was in the same situation, it was the opposite, Robredo did not hit a single first serve, it was second serves and Fed shanked them all or dumped them in the net. This had nothing to do with movement, it was mental.
The problem for Fed is that, early on in his career, he was told he was a natural and his best game was enough to beat anybody, that he did not need to adjust/adapt. In the meantime, everyone was adapting/adjusting. How many times have you seena picture of Fed working out? Muzza transforms his physique to adapt, Nole changes his nutrition to adapt, Rafa is always adjusting mid-match, Fed does nothing. Oh sorry, he becomes a serve and volleyer……………..really?
It just hit me that, in my post above, I am essentially calling Fed a one-dimensional player. Irony of ironies, isn’t that what he called Rafa sometime back?
#Karma
deucey,
Great observations about Fed! In fact, the espn commentators did point out his poor footwork in the match. That is a function of getting older. This is the way it is with all great champions. The only way to avoid it is to leave the game early the way Borg did. He walked away in the peak of his career. I would not want to see that happen again. But mentally and physically the skills start to deteriorate. Fed has held up well until this year when it all seemed to catch up with him. He isn’t going to be making any more comebacks. He had his renaissance last year when he won Wimbledon and got the #1 ranking back again. Now it’s all going to be downhill.
It’s not a tragedy. He has been healthy throughout his career without any serious injuries. He has done everything he wanted to do in this sport. I found it kind of hard to watch near the end, but it does happen to all great champions.
Also, great point about Fed’s opponents having confidence now. I also think that losing in the second round at Wimbledon did a lot of damage. That one had to hurt. I don’t know that Fed has really recovered from that loss. That is the one that knocked him out of the top four. I don’t see him getting back. Not now.
It’s more than just a loss of speed Deucy. He’s lost his ‘lucidity’ too. Ive had the feeling several times this year when matches were not going well that panic has set in. That combined with his reluctance to change his game mid-match (something Rafa and Andy excel at) is why he has floundered at all the slams and masters this year with the exception of Cincy.
@ed
Always thought that Fed was an “instinctive” player and au contraire, that Andy thought far too much…;)
^^Naughty, naughty
I think I may have given the following link to a BBC radio interview before. It dates back to May 2009 but it was what triggered my irritation not just at his overweening complacency but also the dismissive tone of his comments about Andy and the references to Rafa with the habitual sting in the tail.
However, one can detect in many of his responses the portents of his current predicament. Years of adulation, combined with a largely sycophantic press corps – not to mention the OTT live match commentators – blinded him to the need to adapt to changing circumstances.
He will always rank as one of the Greatest Players but by now I imagine only die-hard Fedfans are still clinging to the GOATdom theory.
@ed251137, please see the following article.
“There had been something disconcerting about Nadal’s excessive sweating during his third-round match last Saturday evening against Australia’s Bernard Tomic, yet the reason he lost to Ferrer had nothing do with the lingering effects of the flu-like virus he picked up at the start of the month while playing in Abu Dhabi and Doha. ”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/tennis/australianopen/8284078/Australian-Open-2011-Rafael-Nadals-Australia-Day-curse-strikes-again-as-injury-ends-bid-for-Rafa-Slam.html
The sweating was so bad and it looked even worse through his form fitting shirt, which Nike changed to a loose baggy one for the following match.
rafaisthebest@September 3, 2013 at 4:11 pm
You shouldn’t panic, Rafa’s excessive sweating yesterday was caused by high humidity.
Other men also sweated profusely.
Thanks @augusta08. My concern was more to do with whether he would recover in time for his next match given he lost so much fluid. But Rafa has expert advice around him and he will get the appropriate attention.
It’s true that all the men were sweating buckets last night. Robredo left a puddle of sweat on the court when he was serving. Gasquet and Raonic were sweating profusely in their match. Raonic was out of gas late in the fifth set.
Rafa will do what is necessary to get hydrated and recover. I did notice that during the on court post-match interview with Brad Gilbert, Rafa was drinking from his water bottle. So he must have been feeling it. But I think he will be okay.
Oh RITB..dont stress too much..Relax
Even Roger was sweating last night. The last time I remember him breaking sweat was at the Beijing Olympics. But maybe it was more than just humidity which was responsible.
I don’t ever remember seeing Fed sweating like that. His hair was soaking wet. I think the conditions were truly dreadful for all the players.
A good analysis of Federer’s loss:
http://straightsets.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/09/03/federer-paid-price-for-not-adjusting-his-game-plan/?_r=0
Apparently, a lot of Fed fans were upset last night that his match was moved on the smaller Amstrong court. One woman complained to NY Daily News and asked why Nadal couldn’t wait (for Federer’s match to be over), why Nadal received “preferential treatment”. Er…maybe it had something to do with their current rankings?
Fed himself was happy about moving his match to the Amstrong court!
—But location, according to Federer, wasn’t the problem. In fact, he had hoped it might be a solution. He said the surface there is faster than it is in Ashe, which is to his liking, and that the fans might give him some energy.
“I’ve been practicing on Armstrong,” Federer said, “so there’s no excuse there. I was prepared for it. I was even happy about it. I thought it was going to be a great atmosphere, that I could take advantage of maybe the fact that people were really going to get behind me. But unfortunately I didn’t show the game that they could really get into and excited about.”—
http://www.tennis.com/pro-game/2013/09/owning-night/49024/#.UiZCNtKmjPW
Federer’s fans were upset because they couldn’t all fit into the smaller Amstrong court. It’s understandable, but they have better get used to it.
Shirling: You mentioned earlier today the irritation of French TV ignoring marquee matches in favour of showing French players’ matches. I can recommend the investment (€3.90 per month) for a subscription to Eurosport Player. High quality streaming with a choice of up to six matches although you can only have one at a time. So I have the TV on with sound muted, live scoring to see what is happening in other matches and then dart between them on the Eurosport Player (usually English commentaries). They also have a catch up feature but not for every match only those that been televised on TV – heavy bias towards the French players obviously.
The worst aspect of the French coverage is the inane ‘Advantage Leconte’. What a waste of time and money that is. Dont know why they would think we want to be ‘entertained’ by a group of has-beens trying to be amusing (and failing dismally) when there is a tense match being played out on court.
oh, thx ed, I’ll consider that. Indeed 3.9 Euros doesn’t seem too much. You seem to have a multi-screen-media live show everytime you see a match, lol 🙂
… yeah… I don’t get angry any more, of course the FR want to see the FR.. but, why do they call it Eurosport….?
Mind you, some FR players are fun to watch, like Monfils, Gasket, Tsonga, Paire..
^^^Too right I have. My head is buzzing. Doesn’t help getting so little sleep during the American swing – which seems to have been going on for ever. Beats working though. lol.
During the Olympics I was watching so many events simultaneously (British and French TV, plus don’t know how many live streams) my computer adapter burnt out and I had to make a 2-hour round dash for a replacement 🙁
Another observation last night: Rafa is all muscles and bones. He doesn’t seem to have any body fat! I could count his muscles and rib bones when he bended down to put away his stuff after the end of the game. Hey, they put shirtless Rafa on the supertrone so many times, I just had to look. 😀
nah, he has some.
JCKNY: Ricky is right. Have you never noticed the ‘love handles’ on the hips 😉
JCKNY @September 4, 2013 at 3:11 am
ed251137 @September 4, 2013 at 9:58 am
Here you can see plenty of photos of Rafa to count his muscles, rib bones and estimate his body fatness:
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.622091147812038.1073742074.148883365132821&type=1
🙂
^^^ Told you so……. 🙂