Kerber makes semis
Serena to play
exactly the muscle. Just happened minutes ago. This type of injury is difficult to know immediately, no? We need to wait a couple of hours. Tomorrow I am going to do a test, an MRI here, then we will know,’’ he said.
Nadal retired when down a break 0-2 in the fifth set and confronting the reality there was no hope he cold fight back to win the game when he was limping so badly that he was struggling to walk.
‘‘It is not the first time an opportunity that is gone for me. I am a positive person, and I can be positive, but today is an opportunity lost to be in the semifinals of a Grand Slam and fight for an important title for me.
‘‘In this tournament [it] already happened a couple of times in my life, so it’s really, I don’t want to say frustration, but [it] is really tough to accept, especially after a tough December that I had without having a chance to start in Abu Dhabi and then Brisbane.
‘‘I worked hard to be here. We did all the things that we believed were the right things to do to be ready. I think I was ready. I was playing OK.’’
Nadal comfortably took the first set against the sixth seed Cilic, who had not beaten him in the last seven matches. Cilic had won just one set against Nadal in nine years. Then he won four games in a row and took the second set.
Cilic hit an astonishing 83 winners. He hit 20 aces to Nadal’s three. He constantly pushed sliding balls out wide to Nadal in the deuce court. Repeatedly he won points, so he just kept doing it. Variety be damned.
‘‘He was playing good ... but I was fighting for it. I was two sets to one up,’’ Nadal said.
When a similar argument was raised about injuries last year, the world No 1’s position received little support from rival Roger Federer.
‘‘Shave 10 years off our age, and we probably will do better,’’ Federer said in November last year at the ATP World Tour finals when asked about another Nadal injury.
‘‘A lot of the guys are just touching 30 plus. Back in the day, at 30, a lot of guys were retiring. Edberg, Sampras, it was, like, normal at 29,
32, to start looking towards the end of your career. Now you guys expect everybody to play till 36.
‘‘When somebody is injured at
31, it’s like, ‘Oh, my God, how is this possible?’ Actually, it’s a normal thing.’’
Cilic will play unseeded British player Kyle Edmund in the semifinal. A week ago you would not have given counterfeit money on that happening. Any doubts that former world No 1 Angelique Kerber deserves her spot right now among the elite in the women’s game were erased after the German destroyed Madison Keys in the Australian Open quarterfinals.
Needing just 51 minutes in the opening match of day 10 on Rod Laver Arena, the German monstered Keys off the court, winning 6-1 6-2.
It was as clinical a performance at the finals stage of a major as you’re ever likely to see. Even after Kerber broke Keys in the first game and then saved a break point on serve, the two-time major winner raced through the opener in just 22 minutes.
Kerber, surely, would have jumped into outright favouritism after this victory. The stats were damning for the American and glowing for Kerber. Both players managed 13 winners but 25 unforced errors came from the racket of Keys, while Kerber committed just seven. It told the story of the match as the nervy American slipped on the big stage, Wednesday’s performance an echo of her 6-3, 6-0 loss to compatriot Sloane Stephens in the US Open final just four months ago. Serena Williams is ready to return to competition for the first time in more than a year, a little more than five months after giving birth.
The US Tennis Association announced yesterday that Williams will represent the country in its first-round Fed Cup matches against the Netherlands in Asheville, North Carolina, on Feb. 10-11.
Williams, who became a mother on Sept. 1, has not played an official match since winning the Australian Open in January 2017 for her 23rd Grand Slam singles title. She later revealed she was pregnant during that tournament.
Asked about how she had planned for her opponent, the 2016 Australian Open champion said she was entirely focused on her own performance.
‘‘No, I was actually just playing my game. Not thinking about errors and winners. Staying in the moment,’’ Kerber said on-court.
‘‘Every game was close in the second set.’’