Rafael Nadal Page 7 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
The Undersized Diego Schwartzman Took A Set Off Rafael Nadal, And Then It Rained
Tennis, particularly the men’s side, has fallen into a certain rhythm, and if you’re a certain kind of old-school clay-court fogey, this rhythm might be boring. Boom, boom, boom, boom. The serve is the most powerful offensive tool in the game. It is the only shot in the game completely within a play...
Rafael Nadal And The Rain Kept The Future Of Tennis In Check
What if the rain hadn’t come? Maybe Alexander Zverev would have gotten his third straight title, and the most significant win of his life: Rafael Nadal on clay in a final. That’s not an especially big “maybe,” either, just a medium-sized one....
Dominic Thiem Did All The Dirty Work And Claimed None Of The Glory
Assume by default that Rafael Nadal wins any big event on clay. Take it as a given that his teeth are pressing into the trophy well before the first match gets underway. This has been true for many long swaths of the last decade, but it has maybe never been truer than right now, with Rafa still bull...
Dominic Thiem Resists Clay Colossus Rafael Nadal, Ends 50-Set Streak
Rafael Nadal’s incomprehensible streak of consecutive sets won on clay has ended at 50. And it was ended by the last person to have scraped a set off him on the surface, a full 51 weeks ago: Dominic Thiem. The upset demanded huge hitting from the world No. 7, who has had a somewhat uninspired week...
Rafael Nadal Eats Clay Three Square Meals A Day And Also Has It For Dessert
Does Rafael Nadal live in clay? He may. Is it where he likes to play? Yea—he has owned it for his entire career, and that dominance was made even clearer two weeks ago when he finally took the record for most consecutive sets won on clay. Today he claimed his 21st straight victim on the red stuff, a...
Rafael Nadal Catches Shit For Supporting Rival Soccer Clubs
Rafael Nadal is roughly midway through his clay-court rampage, having lengthened his consecutive set streak to a record 46, and just had some time off between tournaments in Barcelona and Madrid. He spent some of that precious downtime watching soccer, which he loves deeply....
Rafa Is Somehow Still Setting New Records On Clay
Today, playing at the Barcelona Open, a tournament he has won 10 times, on a court officially named “Pista Rafa Nadal,” Rafael Nadal won his 39th and 40th consecutive sets on clay. This extends an Open Era–record for consecutive sets on clay courts, per the ATP, that Nadal first set last Sunday in t...
Rafa Is About To Do This All Over Again, Isn't He?
Enter Dominic Thiem, the dull boy who is good on dirt. For all his fits elsewhere, the Austrian has mastered clay, a surface that slows things down enough for his deep court positioning, thumping strokes, and one-track mind. He’s the only player who can justifiably hold any ember of hope when facing...
Rafael Nadal Might Have To Stop Picking His Butt Before Every Serve At The U.S. Open
The U.S. Open is getting strict about the time allowed between points, saying that there will be a “serve clock” of 25 seconds during the matches at this year’s event, according to the New York Times....
Dammit, Rafael Nadal Will Be Out For A While
Subtract Rafael Nadal from any given tennis tournament, and boom—the participants collectively give 10,000 percent less of a shit about winning. He treasures every point of every match in every tournament. The man who won 16 Slams, including two last year, reportedly cried for two hours straight aft...
Roger Federer Is Three Wins From Becoming The Oldest No. 1 Player Ever
Fresh off winning his second-straight Australian Open, Roger Federer has taken a wild card to play Rotterdam next week. In his old age/late empire, Federer has opted for a light tournament schedule, and he hasn’t played this particular 500-level event since 2012. But he lost just two sets at the Aus...
The TV Is Stuck On The Federer-Nadal Show And The Remote Has Disappeared Into The Sofa
Apologies if you expected the channel to change after the two greatest split the year’s four majors evenly between themselves. Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal’s enduring dominance, and the inconsistency of their most dangerous threats, have frozen everything in place. The hypothetical Next Generation...
Nick Kyrgios's Tantrum Was Rafael Nadal's Cue To Dominate
How was your weekend? I got myself a nice bowl of pasta but some new mosquito bites. Nick Kyrgios, too, had both good and bad times....
The Tennis Will Be Good As Hell This Weekend, If You're Awake For It
Frankly this chunk of the tennis calendar, known as the “Asian swing” because it passes through China and Japan, is the easiest to tune out, especially for a viewer in a U.S. time zone. The year’s last major just wrapped up, the year-end finals are still months away, and the time difference makes it...
The Laver Cup Is What You Get When Tennis Tries To Be More Like Pro Wrestling, And That's A Good Thing
The worst-case scenario for the Laver Cup—a first attempt to construct an all-star game for men’s tennis, pitting the best players from Europe against the best players from everywhere else—was that it’d end up an elaborate, expensive excuse to smush nemeses Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal onto the sa...
How Can Anyone Say Rafael Nadal Is Playing The Best Tennis Of His Life?
This much is true: Rafael Nadal won the U.S. Open, and he’s playing exemplary tennis. In the present, soft field, the tennis is so good that it brought Nadal back to world No. 1 for the first time in four years, with two slams, two masters, and a 56-9 record. But all the hyperbole does make one wond...
Rafa Is Supreme, And Everyone Else Is Allowed To Wake Up Now
Perfect symmetry has been achieved: Rafael Nadal won the U.S. Open. Before that, Roger Federer won Wimbledon. Before that, Nadal won the French Open. Before that, Federer beat Nadal to win the Australian Open. The two greatest players in men’s tennis returned from long injury hiatus to split 2017’s ...
The U.S. Open Men's Draw Is A Joke
If you’re a man who can stand upright without anything hurting, you’ve got as good a shot as anyone to win the 2017 U.S. Open. Gone are the elites usually clotting the late rounds of majors. Of the top 11 players in men’s tennis, five of them are too hurt to play: No. 11 Milos Raonic, No. 10 Kei Nis...
All The Top Men In Tennis Are Broken And Calling It A Day
First it was Novak Djokovic, sitting out the rest of the season to just, uh, generally debug....
On The Busiest Day In Tennis, Rafael Nadal Fell In Five Hours
At Wimbledon, per tradition, the first Sunday is a day of rest. By design there are never any matches scheduled. (Unless rain has derailed the first week of play, in which case, they play out of necessity.) Still, on that day the practice courts are abuzz. Here is how the New York Times describes t...