Nadal battles injury scare
Wincing from abdominal pain, unable to ply his customary relentless style of tennis, Rafael Nadal thought he might need to stop playing in the Wimbledon quarterfinals against Taylor Fritz.
Up in the Centre Court stands, Nadal’s father was motioning to the 22-time grand slam champion to quit. Nadal didn’t listen. He stayed out there, adjusted his service motion and his strategy – and figured out a way to win.
With much of the crowd roaring and standing after Nadal’s best strokes, he twice erased oneset deficits against the 11th-seeded Fritz and emerged with 3-6 7-5 3-6 7-5 7-6 (10-4) victory yesterday to reach his eighth semifinal at the All England Club.
‘‘For a lot of moments I was thinking, ‘Maybe I will not be able to finish the match’,’’ Nadal said.
He did complete it, but said he couldn’t be sure whether he will be able to play tomorrow against Nick Kyrgios, a 27-year-old Australian who earned his grand slam semifinal debut with a 6-4 6-3 7-6 (5) victory over Cristian Garin, of Chile.
‘‘I don’t know exactly what I have. It’s clear something’s not right,’’ said Nadal, who will get tests for an issue that first cropped up nearly a week ago but got much worse at 3-1 in the first set against Fritz. ‘‘I’m obviously worried.’’
The other men’s semifinal tomorrow is Novak Djokovic against Cam Norrie. The women’s semifinals overnight were 2019 champion Simona Halep against Elena Rybakina, and Ons Jabeur against Tatjana Maria. Halep eliminated Amanda Anisimova 6-2 6-4 and Rybakina defeated Ajla Tomljanovic 4-6 6-2 6-3.
Nadal got to his 38th career major semifinal by denying what would have been a first such appearance for Fritz despite clearly battling with problem in his stomach area, which had some athletic tape. Nadal left the court with a trainer for a medical timeout while up 4-3 in the second set; Fritz paced around the baseline, waiting.
A doctor gave Nadal some pills; the trainer tried to relax the muscle.
When action resumed, Nadal was compromised. It was hard not to think: Might he give up?
Nadal acknowledged that went through his mind. Fritz did, too.
‘‘It definitely made me kind of think. I kind of stopped being as aggressive,’’ the 24-year-old American said. ‘‘I feel like I let it kind of get to me a little bit.’’
He pretty much handed over the second set of what would become a 4hr 21min contest under a sky of slate clouds. After Fritz took the third set, his big serve got broken three times in the next.
Nadal occasionally would watch a ball off Fritz’s orange racket fly by. Nadal couldn’t move the way he usually does. His trademark grunts of ‘‘Uhhhh!’’ were rare. He didn’t generate the usual zip on his serves. He sought to end exchanges with a quick-strike forehand or a drop shot – sometimes with success, often not.
But Nadal is not one who concedes easily. This was his 351st grand slam match and he has a total of three mid-match retirements at majors (against Andy Murray at the 2010 Australian Open, against Marin Cilic at the 2018 Australian Open, and against Juan Martin del Potro at the 2018 US Open). In all tour-level events, the totals are: 1275 matches, nine retirements.
‘‘I hate to do it,’’ Nadal said. So he summoned his best for last, grabbing a 5-0 lead in the closing tiebreaker – the first-to-10, win-by-two format starting at 6-6 in a fifth set is new to Wimbledon this year – and then five of the last six points.
Fritz’s take on the tiebreaker? ‘‘Got destroyed,’’ he said.
‘‘Probably hurts more than any loss I’ve ever had,’’ Fritz said. ‘‘After the match was over, I was sitting there and I felt like crying.’’
Nadal, who won Wimbledon in 2008 and 2010, leads Kyrgios 6-3 head-to-head; they are 1-1 at Wimbledon. In 2014, Kyrgios, then just 19 and ranked 144th, announced himself to the world by winning; in 2019, Nadal took the rematch after Kyrgios was at a local pub into the wee hours the night before.
Kyrgios became the first unseeded and lowest-ranked man to get to the final four at the All England Club since 2008 by playing what, for him, amounts to a restrained and efficient brand of tennis against Garin.
‘‘I thought my ship had sailed,’’ Kyrgios said. ‘‘Obviously, I didn’t go about things great early in my career and may have wasted that little window.’’
Kyrgios, who is ranked 40th, has garnered more attention for his behaviour on and off the court than his skills with a racket in hand. His match against the unseeded Garin came a day after police in Canberra, Australia, said that Kyrgios is due in court next month to face an allegation of common assault stemming from something that happened in December.