Ferrer: Nadal still favourite
Spaniard says eight-time champion the man to beat in Paris despite his back problems
Maybe, just maybe, Rafael Nadal was a tad vulnerable, the thinking went before this French Open. He had lost three times on his beloved red clay already this year, more defeats than he ever had on the surface, before heading to Roland Garros.
Then came an admission, after the Grand Slam tournament’s third round, that his back was bothering him and slowing his serves.
Well, leave it to the eight-time French Open champion’s upcoming quarter-final opponent — 2013 runnerup David Ferrer, one of the men who beat Nadal on clay this spring — to set the record straight.
‘‘Rafael,’’ Ferrer said, ‘‘is always the favourite.’’
Nadal certainly looked the part in the fourth round yesterday, when he won 18 points in a row during one stretch en route to beating 83rdranked Dusan Lajovic of Serbia 6-1, 6-2, 6-1 for a record 32nd consecutive victory at the French Open. That broke Nadal’s own mark of 31 and moved him a step closer to a fifth straight title in Paris.
The No 1-ranked Nadal, now 63-1 for his career at the tournament, has won all 12 sets he’s played in Paris in 2014, dropping a total of 23 games.
And his back? The one that flummoxed him during a loss in the Australian Open final in January, and then acted up on Sunday, leading to an average first serve of 165km/h and top speed of 184km/h? It didn’t appear to be as much of an issue against Lajovic: Nadal averaged 173km/h, with a high of 192km/h. ‘‘My back can be pretty unpredictable,’’ said Nadal. ‘‘I’m not lying. It’s totally unpredictable. I don’t want to speak too much about it.’’ Okay, then. Now he takes on No 5 Ferrer, who eliminated No 19 Kevin Anderson of South Africa 6-3, 6-3, 6-7 (5), 6-1. Last year’s French Open final is one of 21 losses for Ferrer in 27 matches against fellow Spaniard Nadal. But Ferrer won their most recent meeting in straight sets, on April 18 at the Monte Carlo Masters.
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As Ferrer himself noted, though, that was a best-of-three-set match. They’ll be playing best-of-five on Thursday.
‘‘Tactically, I will have to be perfect,” Ferrer said.
The other quarter-final on the top half of the draw will be Wimbledon champion Andy Murray against 23rdseeded Gael Monfils of France.
No 7 Murray beat No 24 Fernando Verdasco of Spain 6-4, 7-5, 7-6 (3) in a match marked by a wild third set. Verdasco held to get within 4-3 with an apparent service winner, but chair umpire Pascal Maria said that point should be replayed because a line judge called the ball out. That prompted Verdasco to begin berating Maria, shouting ‘‘Are you kidding me?’’ and saying he wanted a tournament supervisor to intervene — until Murray conceded the point.
They also should consider whether pressure on Fifa to ditch Qatar is based on an abundance of cold, hard facts and proof of Qatari wrongdoing. Or is Western snobbery, jealousy of Qatar’s wealth and disdain for what is a new frontier in the global spread of football also playing a role.?
Yes, the evidence of apparent sleaze, patronage and influencebuying leaked to the by what it called “a senior Fifa insider” does look compelling.
It alleged that Qatari official Mohamed bin Hammam, subsequently banned for life by Fifa in 2012, made dozens of payments totaling $5 million to generate a swell of support in the game for Qatar and its ambitious bid to play the World Cup in air-conditioned stadiums in a country with no soccer tradition.
The investigation was impressively detailed, with emails and spreadsheets showing apparent payments and favours for African football officials.
The easy argument to make now is that the buck should stop with Blatter and that he must resign or, at the very least, abandon his ambitions for another four-year term from 2015.
Although the newspaper didn’t allege wrongdoing by the Fifa president, bribery, vote-buying and corruption scandals during his 16-year watch have shredded the governing body’s reputation. There’d be cheers inside and outside soccer if he stepped aside.
But surely more pressing for soccer than the relatively narrow issue of whether Blatter should go (which he won’t) is the broader issue of Fifa’s future and credibility.
It must prove to a world that struggles to believe anything it does or says that it can now clean up its own mess. It must show that it has properly investigated Qatar’s bid.