French Open champion marches on
Nadal looks as good as ever after picking apart Khachanov
RAFAEL NADAL confessed earlier this week that he is prone to doubting himself. On the basis of this battering, anyone who shares his reservations ought to spend less time in the sun.
He was brilliant here, a bully in the way he destroyed the confidence and then the campaign of one of the tour’s bright, young things.
Within five minutes he had Karen Khachanov, the 30th seed, missing his lines and within 13 minutes, he was 4-0 to the good. By the end, he was arguably the man to beat in these Championships.
And that is absurd, really. Out of the desperate lows of 2016, when his number looked up, he is now starting to faintly resemble the all-court genius of 2010, when he took three Slams and one on each surface. This year he has made the final of the Australian Open, won his tenth title at the French Open and stormed to the fourth round of Wimbledon.
Among it all, he has now gone 28 sets without loss, dating back to his first-round win in Paris, and each one is taking him a step closer towards another Grand Slam.
‘Karen is a tough opponent,’ said Nadal. ‘He is good on grass, but for a set and a half I played fantastic. After that was a bit worse but in general terms I played very well. I am very happy. It is always good to be in the second week.’
That much has not been taken for granted in recent years. This is only the second time he has reached the fourth round at Wimbledon since 2011, owing to his issues with the surface and the knee and wrist injuries that hurt his career in recent seasons.
But it is instructive this year that Nadal is speaking like a man who is pain-free for the first time in years. He said: ‘When you are under problems, you don’t have confidence with your body. You think you can’t put your leg there because it is painful.
‘But if you feel that you are healthy, then you feel confident that you can do whatever you want. That’s very important.’
Here, he had complete control of body and ball. Indeed, the first set of this match was probably the best 22 minutes of Nadal’s tournament so far.
Nobody slips and slides with more control than the Spaniard. And nobody cracks a forehand with quite the ferocity that Nadal loads behind the ball.
One such shot, blistering and across court, came in the fourth game and it must have terrified his opponent.
This was his first experience of playing Nadal and he was given a going over in the early stages.
Nadal crushed Khachanov’s spirit to the point that the 21-yearold coughed up 11 unforced errors and landed not a single winner. For context, he hit 125 winners in his first two matches.
The Russian settled but was broken in the third game of the second set, which proved decisive. In the third, Khachanov made a far better game of it, but still found no way through.
He held break points at both 3-4 and 5-6, yet each time was met by an opponent who had the answer — usually a brutal forehand down the line. Nadal took the tie break 7-3 and with it, surely, wiped away a few of those doubts.