Rafael Nadal battles pass Juan Martin Del Potro to reach the quarter-finals – Wimbledon Championships 2011
World number one, Rafael Nadal of Spain, wins the straining battle against the aggressive Argentine, Juan Martin Del Potro, to reach the quarter-finals of the Wimbledon Championships on Monday afternoon.
The top seed nearly withdrew from the contest due to his foot injury but displayed tremendous resilience to eventually take down Del Potro in the four-set thriller 7-6(6), 3-6, 7-6(4), 6-4, taking three hours and fifty two minutes
of play.
It was an evenly poised contest with intense tennis being played from both contestants with the intention of getting place in the quarter-finals of the Grand Slam tournament. Nadal went through a lengthy medical treatment when
he suffered from a mysterious foot injury at 6-6 in the opening set and was on verge of withdrawal from the contest. The defending champion showed his nerves of steel and sheer determination yet another time and recovered from the injury very quickly to clinch
victory from the Argentine in the fourth set.
“I thought I’d have to retire,” Nadal told after he won the match, “I felt something very strange. I don’t know what the problem is yet, I felt that I had broken my foot, I felt terrible. Some pain stayed with me for the match
but the tape changed probably the position of the foot and the distribution of the power so I was able to continue.”
Only one break point each was seen from the two top class players in the entire action-packed matchup ant two sets were decided in the tie breaker rounds. Ranked at number 21 in the world, Del Potro exhibited a brilliant display
of professional tennis in the crunch match against the world number one. He met Nadal’s intensity with commanding aggression right from the beginning, taking the scores to 6-6 before Nadal took a 10 minutes time out for his injured foot.
The Argentine led the opening set tie breaker to 3-0 but the belligerent Spaniard had recovered from his sore foot by then and he rallied past Del Potro to bag the first set at 7-6(6). The 24th seed broke for the first
time in the following set to reach 6-3 and levelled the competition with one set a piece, before he dropped the next set in the tie breaker 6-7(4).
The defending champion shifted his gears in the fourth set and registered his first serve break of the day to conclude an emphatic victory at 6-4. Nadal will take on the 10th seed Mardy Fish of the United States in the
quarter-final clash, as the American surprised the sixth seed Tomas Berdych in the fourth round on Monday.
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