Rafael Nadal: 'It’s difficult to make predictions about how...'

The Australian Open is not Rafael Nadal's tournament and the lost quarterfinal match with Stefanos Tsitsipas confirms this. The Greek finished 3-6 2-6 7-6 6-4 7-5 after four hours. Tsitsipas at other times in his career would probably have let go of the match after the first two sets, in the face of discouragement from his inability to find solutions capable of breaking Nadal's initial superiority. The Spaniard, aggressive but with better measure in the first half of the match, committed five free to twelve in the first set and in the second he lost just four points in service. Good at opening the field with a diagonal backhand against Tsitsipas' forehand, where he directed most of his winning shots, Nadal for the first two sets maintained his usual dominance of the scenario and the field. Age and athleticism, however, are on the side of the Greek who had already defeated Nadal in Madrid with an almost perfect display of early answers and winning setbacks. Rafael Nadal insists the tennis season must continue and called for the sport to “find solutions” to the issues surrounding quarantining.

Rafael Nadal insists the tennis season must continue

“Novak Djokovic’s completely right that for our sport things are difficult because governments are changing the rules constantly. So it’s difficult to make predictions about how the things are going to happen. But there is a very clear thing. There are two options. Stop the Tour or keep going. My personal feeling is it’s tough for the players, of course, to have to do bubbles in every single event, flying just plus two, a lot of players have family and they cannot have the family with them, so that makes our Tour probably tougher than ever, no? But on the other hand, if we stop the Tour, why and how and when will we be able to come back? And a lot of jobs are going to suffer a lot. I mean, not only players. A lot of people are living from our sport, no? If we stop our sport again, a lot of people are going to suffer" - Rafael Nadal said. “We need to think a little bit bigger. And of course we need to protect players. Probably we need to find a way to protect the players with the rankings, to not force them to keep playing because the situation is very tough for a lot of players depending on the countries. But that’s it. We need to find solutions and we need to adapt to these very tough times that we are facing. Not only us, the world. We are here to find solutions. I mean, and we need to be grateful to life that we can keep doing what we are doing" - he added.

from Tennis World USA https://ift.tt/3slLsw3