NADAL ELIMINATED AFTER MARATHON
Venus, Ostapenko reach quarterfinals
Two-time Wimbledon champion Rafael Nadal falls to unheralded Gilles Muller 15-13 in the fifth set of their match on Monday.
LONDON — First, Rafael Nadal erased a two-set deficit. Then, he erased four match points. Nadal could not, however, erase the fifth.
After digging himself out of difficult situations over and over during the course of a riveting encounter that lasted more than 4½ hours, Nadal suddenly faltered, getting broken in the last game and losing to 16th-seeded Gilles Muller of Luxembourg 3-6, 4-6, 6-3, 6-4, 15-13 in the fourth round of Wimbledon on Monday.
“It’s tough to say what, exactly, made the difference at the end,” Muller said. “To be honest, I haven’t really realized what just happened.”
The surprising defeat extended Nadal’s drought without a quarterfinal berth at the All England Club to six years.
He has won two of his 15 Grand Slam championships at Wimbledon, and played in the final three other times, most recently in 2011. But since then, Nadal’s exits at the All England Club have come in the first round (2013), second round (2012, 2015) and fourth round (2014, 2017).
All of those losses, except Monday’s, came against men ranked 100th or worse. The 34-year-old Muller is not exactly a giant-killer: He had lost 22 consecutive matches against foes ranked in the top five.
But Muller’s powerful serve and crisp volleys make him what Nadal called “uncomfortable” to play. And Muller — who already owned one victory over Nadal at Wimbledon, back in the second round in 2005 — managed to pull this one out.
Nadal served from behind throughout the final set and was twice a point from losing in its 10th game. He again was twice a point from losing in the 20th. Only when Muller got yet another chance to end it did he, when Nadal got broken by pushing a forehand long.
“When you are in the fifth, against a player like him, (the outcome) just depends on a few balls,” Nadal said, shaking his head. “Actually, he was a little better than me on a few balls.”
Other men’s quarterfinals matchups: defending champion Andy Murray against Sam Querrey of the U.S., Roger Federer against Milos Raonic, Tomas Berdych against Novak Djokovic or Adrian Mannarino. The Djokovic-Mannarino fourth-rounder was postponed until today.
WOMEN: Venus Williams, 37, is the oldest woman in the Wimbledon quarterfinals since 1994. Johanna Konta is the first British woman to make it that far since 1984. Angelique Kerber’s loss to Garbine Muguruza means she’ll relinquish the No. 1 ranking.
Jelena Ostapenko needed eight match points for her latest win — and latest proof that last month’s French Open title was no f luke. Magdalena Rybarikova, a Slovakian ranked 87th, reached her first quarterfinal in 36 Grand Slam tournaments.
Those were among the significant goings-on in women’s fourth-round action on Monday, when another topic took hold: Why were so few of these matches played on the tournament’s biggest courts?
“I mean, honestly, I didn’t think about that,” the 13thseeded Ostapenko said, then quickly added: “But, I mean, yeah, I think I deserve to play on a better court than Court 12, I guess.”
All England Club chief executive Richard Lewis said scheduling decisions involve “some difficult choices.”
Lewis said one factor Monday was that “four of the all-time great male players” — Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal, Novak Djokovic and Andy Murray — were all playing. Their matches were all on the tournament’s two principal courts.
“In the end, it’s not about male-female,” he said. “It’s about which matches in the end are the ones that the public and broadcasters most of all would like to see.”