Nadal rallies to reach Miami fourth round
MIAMI: Rafael Nadal came back from an awful first set to defeat Germany’s Philipp Kohlschreiber 0-6, 6-2, 6-3 and advance to the fourth round of the Miami Open on Sunday.
The Spaniard, playing his 1,000th ATP match, suffered just the 14th 0-6 set of his career, claiming just 33 percent of first serve points won and making a string of unforced errors.
After looking badly out of sorts, Nadal was able to rediscover his form in the second set and in the end ran out a comfortable winner.
Nadal said that there was little he could do against Kohlschreiber’s outstanding play in the opening set.
“He was doing everything good. So that’s sport, as I said hundred of times and when somebody is playing the way that he was playing the first set... he was playing too good. That’s it,” said Nadal.
“The positive thing is I handled the pressure very well after a very tough first set. I resisted well the first few games of the second, and then I think I played a great second and third set,” he said.
Nadal said the key to his comeback had been his ability to change the tempo and rhythm of the match.
“It was obvious that the points had been too quick. He was able to return so quick and to hit every ball as hard as he could. So I needed to play a little bit longer points.”
Japan’s Kei Nishikori came through a tough test against Spaniard Fernando Verdasco 7-6 (7/2), 6-7(5/7) 6-1.
In the women’s event, world No.1 Angelique Kerber came back from a break down in both sets to beat American Shelby Rogers 6-4, 7-5 and move into the fourth round.
With no sign of the rain that interrupted the past two days on Key Biscayne, Kerber was joined in the round of 16 by Britain’s Johanna Konta, American Venus Williams and Russia’s Svetlana Kuznetsova all who had comfortable wins.
Although ranked 61st in the world, Rogers has beaten Karolina Pliskova, Petra Kvitova, Simona Halep and Daria Kasatkina in the last year and had her eye on beating the top seed.
An upset looked possible when the American won the first three games of the opening set but Kerber recovered to win six of the next seven.
It was a similar story in the second set where Rogers, having saved a break point, hit some good winners to go 4-2 up only for the German to power back and secure a fourth round meeting with Japanese qualifier Risa Ozaki who beat German Julia Georges 7-6 (7/5), 6-3.