Rafael Nadal
The Australian Open had a dramatic day with the whitewash of Rafael Nadal. He will now be unable to join the likes of Rod Laver in the books of history as holding all the four singles grand slams titles at the same time.
Wednesday’s quarter-finals match in the Australian Open was played in Laver Arena, with the world number one being defeated by the seventh seed David Ferrer who is ironically one of Nadal’s close friends.
Boy! Now we can imagine what Venus and Serene Williams feel like when they play against each other.
Rafael Nadal lost the quarter finals quite convincingly in three straight sets 6-4, 6-2, 6-3 to David Ferrer. It is now common knowledge that Nadal was suffering from an injury of the left hamstring and required many medical timeouts. He however refused to acknowledge that he lost the match due to his injury, it is obvious being the gentlemen and icon that he is, and he didn’t want to steal any of the spot light from the winner and didn’t want to undermine David Ferrer’s victory.
Nadal said after the match during a news conference “First of all, I don’t know anything (about the injury) and secondly in respect to the winner and to a friend, I prefer to talk about the match.” David played at a very high level. I congratulate him and wish him all the best for the semi-final.”
Whether Rafael Nadal admits it or not however anyone could see that after a point he looked in no shape to win this quarter final and it was most definitely the injury that caused him to miss out on that honour.
Nadal’s exit is however good news for his competitors, Roger Federer and Andy Murray who have both lost to him on numerous occasions.
David Ferrer will now play Andy Murray in the semi finals on Friday the 28th of January.
Roger Federer fans will however be heaving a sigh of relief with Nadal’s departure, not that a Nadal-Federer finale isn’t brilliant every year but something unexpected and surprising is so much better to watch.
Hopefully Nadal’s exit will bring a bit more drama to the finale.
Tags: Andy Murray, Australian Open, David Ferrer, Laver Arena, Rafael Nadal, Roger Federer
