It could not be. 42 days after the forced goodbye to Wimbledon, where an abdominal injury could with his aspirations, Rafael Nadal has lost this morning on his return to the Cincinnati cement (7-6(9), 4-6 and 6-3), a Masters 1000 that, although he won in 2013, has never been a dish of good taste for the Spanish. In a match close to three hours, in which the expected rain forced the clash to be stopped for long minutes, Nadal has lost to the Croatian Borna Coric, 25 years old, as of today, a member of a select group, that of the three tennis players who enjoy a positive balance against Manacori: Novak Djokovic (30-29), Dustin Brown (2-0) and, now, the one from Zagreb (3-2).
“I haven’t played my best game. It is something that can happen after a while without competing and that has historically happened to me in this tournament. I can only congratulate Borna [Coric] because he has played great tennis”, said the Spaniard after the match. And he added: “It is difficult to extract positive things from such a defeat, although I know this way. I need to improve, I need to train hard, but the priority for me is to stay healthy. The last month and a half has not been easy at all.
Weighed down in confidence, where the abdominal injury undermines his performance on serve, Nadal acknowledges that he still needs to let go: “The scar makes me play a little more conservative and be more erratic in the important moments of the match.”
Does not lie. In the highly disputed first set, a constant give and take interrupted by the water for more than an hour —The Cincinnati Masters is one of the many tournaments that continues without roofing its central court—, the Spaniard gave up the first great advantage of the match committing an unusual double fault (he added seven in the entire match). “The tear in the abdomen affects you a lot when it comes to serving,” he says, without wanting to justify himself. And he details: “There is a very fine line between feeling the typical discomfort, nothing worrying, which involves having a scar in the muscle or establishing if that pain occurs because something is not right.”
Despite everything, Nadal managed, once again, to turn the situation around and take the match to the third set after prevailing with authority in the second (6-4). There, after a quick consultation with the chair judge, who gave his approval, the Spaniard began to talk with his box without dissimulationsomething unusual on the ATP circuit, where coach and player are prohibited from exchanging opinions during the match.
In the third set, Coric, sidelined from the circuit for the last two years due to a complicated injury to his right shoulder, was fully recovered and asserted his status as an indomitable server: 12 acestwice as much as Nadal.
The Spaniard, with his own doubts about returning to the courts, did not know how to solve the Croatian puzzle —Roberto Bautista will try it in the round of 16— and, to the surprise of more than 10,000 center court attendees, fell to the first change in Cincinnati, where throughout his career he has registered 67% of victories, far from his average in the rest of Masters 1000: 83%.
Now, with the flexibility of the abdominal muscle still diminished by the scar, the Spaniard is clear about his path before the US Open that begins on August 29: “I’m going to have some tests to check that there are no problems. I have a week and a half left to get to Flushing Meadows and I have to activate the Grand Slam mode now.”
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Source: EL PAIS
