Taylor Fritz (24) grows tall and skinny.
It grows and takes flight, looming large on Center Court.
His service is a whip that is projected at more than 200 km/h (he signs 19 aces at the end of the match). His right hand is powerful and very academic, very Zverev-like: he hits flat, poison slicing the corners.
The American becomes imperial, so much so that his compatriots shudder in the stands.
Vocean:
-C’mon, Taylor!
How much they need a new face in their tennis!
Mardy Fish and James Blake didn’t work in their day, and neither do Frances Tiafoe or John Isner or Reilly Opelka today. So much time has passed since the days of Agassi and Sampras, also since Roddick.
What a long journey in the desert.
Fritz and his 1.96m height is their man, they say, and down there the giant accelerates in the first set, displays a festival of maneuvers that allow him to add four games in one go and score that set.
At this point, Rafael Nadal (36) is writhing in pain.
Now it is not the left foot, but the abdomen, a problem that had already appeared in his second match at Wimbledon, he had confessed it after defeating Berankis, and that now seems to explode in his face.
What is this from Nadal, there is no way.
Fritz appears from the other side of the court and the player from Manacor plays conditioned, fighting against his demons, and the chronicler recovers those days in Indian Wells, in spring, when Nadal disputed the title against Fritz.
Then his rib ached.
It hurt so much that he couldn’t bear it.
Have any of you ever broken a rib? It hurts much! -said the man from Manaco on Monday, after beating Van de Zandschulp.
Well that: then, the rib was broken.
(and Fritz had taken the title)
And now?
Now, Nadal is writhing in pain in the first set and calls for a doctor’s attention midway through the second. At this point, his serve is a caricature and Fritz, a monster that crushes him when he must go to the second serve.
The doctor leaves and behind him, Nadal, who disappears for five minutes while Fritz wanders and the judge warns:
-Nadal has been absent due to medical problems.
Perhaps someone else would think so, so many think the same, but Nadal is stubborn and returns to the court, and now he spreads a range of resources on the grass, who would have thought fifteen years ago, when he was crazy chasing Paradorn Srichaphan’s rackets or those of Gilles Muller.
Like a headless chicken, it ran aimlessly from here to there.
Today, Nadal does not run around without rhyme or reason on the Wimbledon lawn, today he moves with sense and intuition, according to his eyes and his hands and his sense of anticipation: Nadal reads Fritz’s movements, interprets his intentions and the sense of his blows. He can not be otherwise, because Fritz hits very hard.
Nadal seems to play chess, he warms up, and with those tools he scores the second set.
The match becomes as intense as it is unpredictable, a game of nerves and nuances in which Fritz seems to get along better. He continues to fly his service, he is already at ten aces, when he scores the third set and Nadal calls the doctor again.
The manacorí is cornered, will he be able to lift this?
He stirs, he does not accept his fate, legends are capricious!
-For your balls, let’s go -says someone in the gallery.
Nadal breaks Fritz’s serve at the restart of the fourth set, the decoration seems to be transfigured, but the American does not give anything away. He does not make unforced errors and squeezes the weaknesses of Nadal’s serve, conditioned by his ailments. And that? Nadal does not give up.
¡No series!
At 3h08m of the match, he links three games in a row and takes the commitment to the limit: there is a fifth set!
Àlex Correa tweets:
– Nadal’s umpteenth comeback and will he end up winning?
Now, stage fright takes hold of Fritz, who opens a dialogue with himself, threatens to throw the racket on the grass, perhaps self-conscious, perhaps disconcerted.
He doesn’t know what to do anymore, he doesn’t know what to think, he feels the weight of Nadality hitting him hard in the seventh game: Nadal pushes him back and finishes him off with a dropshot and steals his serve. Fritz returns the break, and the marathon leads to the super tie break, too much for the seams of the American, who breaks and melts after a rally of 25 shots, the longest of the match.
-How I did it? I don’t know,” says Nadal. It has not been easy at all. And the body? Something is not going well in the abdominal, I have had to find a way to serve in another way. At times I didn’t know if I could finish the game.
Nick Kyrgios, enfant terrible of current tennis, awaits Nadal in the semifinals.
(at the other junction, Djokovic-Norrie)
