The legendary Spaniard – Rafael Nadal played an imperfect match but ended up winning against longtime rival Fabio Fognini in the second round of the US Open.
Rafael Nadal dropped the first set thanks to countless unforced errors and after the match, he admitted it to be one of his worst starts.
“For more than one-and-a-half hours I was not competing, it was one of my worst starts ever,” Nadal said in an on-court interview.
Fabio Fognini led 4-2 in the second set as the alarm bells started ringing for Nadal’s fans, but the southpaw managed to win four games on the trot to level things up. The 4-time US Open champion looked much better as the match progressed. He eventually won 2-6, 6-4, 6-2, 6-1 against an opponent who knocked him out of the 2015 US Open in the third round after being two sets down.
In the fourth set, Nadal was leading 3-0 when he encountered a freak injury. He stretched to hit a backhand and the racquet rebounded off the ground and hit him on the nose. The 22-time Grand Slam champion rushed to the sideline and laid flat on his back with a bloodied nose. A physio attended to him and the 36-year-old returned with a bandaged nose and finished the match. Fognini committed 60 unforced errors, and that is something he would certainly regret in a match where he seemed to have things under control initially.
Tennis fans on Twitter hailed Rafael Nadal following his hard-fought win. The World No. 3 will take on Richard Gasquet on Saturday.
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