Journeyman Muller upsets No. 4 Nadal in 4th-round thriller
After 17 years playing on the tour, 16th seed Gilles Muller won the match of his career with a 6-3, 6-4, 3-6, 4-6, 15-13 fourth-round upset against No. 4 seed Rafael Nadal at Wimbledon on Monday.
“It’s definitely one of the biggest, if not the biggest,” Muller said when asked to categorize the victory. “Yeah, definitely the biggest win, I would say.”
Muller, 34, needed five match points to move into the Wimbledon quarterfinals for the first time in his career.
It also ended his 22-match losing streak against top-five opponents. The last time he toppled a top-five player in a match had been when he upset No. 5 Nikolay Davydenko of Russia in the 2008 U.S. Open fourth round.
Muller will play seventh-seeded Marin Cilic, a 6-2, 6-2, 6-2 winner against 18th-seeded Roberto Bautista Agut of Spain, in the quarterfinals.
“Tired,” Muller said when asked how he was feeling after the match. “It was a long match. It was a big battle. When I had these last two match points, I said, ‘Just go on and give it a try.’ ”
The only other time he reached a Grand Slam tournament quarterfinal was as a qualifier at that 2008 U.S. Open, where he eventually lost to Roger Federer.
This marked the second time Nadal has played a 4-hour, 48minute match at Wimbledon. The last time was when he beat Federer for his first Wimbledon title in the 2008 final.
The average length of matches for men this Wimbledon fortnight is 2 hours, 15 minutes.
Muller seemed calm and always appeared to have the momentum in his corner, especially in the final set. It helped that in the 2-hour, 15-minute final set the Luxembourg native served first, leaving Nadal to always play catch-up after the changeover.
“I felt like at the end I was there all the time on his serves,” Muller said. “I was at love-30, 1530, 30-all. I just felt like what I was doing was the right way, just had to be patient.”
Muller had 95 winners to 77 for Nadal, while Muller had more unforced errors at 52 compared with 17 for Nadal, who was unable to convert his opportunities in the fifth set, missing on five break-point chances.
“So difficult to come back after being two sets (down) against a player like him,” said Nadal, 31. “I think I did well. I had good chances in the fifth.
“I lost in the fourth round. That’s not the result I was expecting. I was ready for important things, so I lost an opportunity.”
Muller had never won a title before this season. He has captured two this year, at Sydney in January and a grass-court title in the Netherlands a few weeks ago.
Nadal’s hopes of winning backto-back French Open and Wimbledon titles for the third time in his career ended.
The lengthy Muller-Nadal match went to near darkness, which resulted in the quarterfinal between second-seeded Novak Djokovic and Adrian Mannarino of France being postponed until Tuesday. The winner will play 11th-seeded Tomas Berdych of the Czech Republic in Wednesday’s quarterfinals.
The other men’s quarterfinals will match No. 1 seed Andy Murray against 24th-seeded Sam Querrey of the USA, and thirdseeded Federer against sixthseeded Milos Raonic of Canada.