The Hindu : Sport : Nadal outlasts Youzhny, enters quarterfinals

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Sport

Nadal outlasts Youzhny, enters quarterfinals

Nirmal Shekar

Photo: AP

Stretched beyond limits: Rafael Nadal warded off Mikhail Youzhny challenge on Thursday.

Venus Williams to play Ana Ivanovic in the semifinals; Bhupathi-Sania beaten in the second round

Djokovic gets past Hewitt
Ivanovic rallies to down Vaidisova

London: Slumped in his chair on the infamous No.2 court at Wimbledon, on Thursday, Rafael Nadal suddenly looked up at the thick pockets of grey clouds moving at a tortoise’s pace over the All England Lawn Tennis Club. It is unlikely that the 21-year old Spaniard, down two sets to love against an inspired Mikhail Youzhny of Russia in a fourth round match of the 121stchampionships, might have spotted a silver lining there.

But, then, in what may have seemed a frustrating season of darkness in London SW 19 — when anything that could go wrong actually did go wrong — for Nadal, the young battler, remarkably, did manage to find that bright spark in his own soul to outlast Youzhny 4-6, 3-6, 6-1, 6-2, 6-2 in three hours and five minutes for a place in the quarterfinals.

Great warrior

Nadal is a lot like Jimmy Connors and Steve Waugh. Like those great warriors, the young man from Majorca sees life and glory where lesser men might contemplate only death and destruction. Alone in the trenches, the staccato bursts of enemy fire sound like inspirational music to Nadal. It suitably fires him up for a climb up an invisible ladder to reach extraordinary heights.

It was the No.2 seed’s second straight five-set win in two days, although Nadal played only a few games in the fifth set to get past Robin Soderling on Wednesday. Then again, this is a man who will cheerfully play five sets each at breakfast, lunch and dinner time every day of the week if that is what it takes to win the championship. Not that what has actually been demanded of him this gloomy fortnight is much less!

After that bizarre five-day match against Soderling, when Nadal found out the identity of his next opponent, he would have certainly sworn that Murphy’s Law was pure science, truth and nothing but the truth. For Youzhny is one of two men — HRH Roger Federer is the other — to have beaten Nadal twice in the last 12 months.

The man who loves blogging may have even considered doing a Google-search for a suitable internet community in which to unload his misery. Unlucky People Anonymous? Does that sound right? Perhaps there is one somewhere out there in the cyber jungle, although anonymity might elude Senor Nadal.

Then again, to be sure, Nadal would be the last man to seek such solace. That path is not for men of his ilk. Instead, Nadal miraculously winnowed out the errors from his game, moved to Plan B — charging up for the kill at opportune moments and whacking the ball even harder than he normally does — and took advantage of Youzhny’s sudden discomfort (a lower back problem) to race through the last three sets.

Nadal has not been serving well in this tournament and his groundstrokes — normally fired with the precision of lasers — have been rather mediocre. It is tough to win a match at this level on just a good pair of legs and a big heart.

For his part, Youzhny played almost point perfect tennis for the first two sets, taking them with breaks in the 10th and second games respectively. Then he called in a trainer for a rub in his lower back and was never the same player again.

Yet, this should take nothing away from Nadal’s marvellous resurgence, built primarily on indestructible self-belief. “The last three sets I played the best tennis of my life on grass,” said Nadal.

Nadal will play Tomas Berdych of the Czech Republic in the quarterfinals on Friday. The seventh seeded Czech beat the Swedish veteran Jonas Bjorkman 6-4, 6-0, 6-7(6), 6-0.

The other quarterfinal in the bottom half of the draw will feature Marcos Baghdatis and Novak Djokovic. While Baghdatis got past Nikolay Davydenko of Russia 7-6(5), 7-6(5), 6-3, Djokovic, seeded four, outlasted a fighting Lleyton Hewitt, the 2002 champion, 7-6(8), 7-6(2), 4-6, 7-6(5).

Venus marches on

Three-time champion Venus Williams, generally in the habit of miraculously reinventing herself as a world-beater once every two or three years, in these parts, continued her majestic march with a 6-3, 6-4 defeat of another top rated Russian, Svetlana Kuznetsova, the fifth seed.

Russia may have long since lost its status as the enemy No.1 on Capitol Hill, but Venus does seem to have a thing or two against the ‘Ovas’ from that complex old nation. After handing out Maria Sharapova a humiliating defeat on Wednesday, Venus, not quite as fired up 24 hours later, still managed to beat Kuznetsova rather easily.

“The Centre Court has been good to Williams the last seven years or so,” said Venus. “So it is a good thing if your last name is Williams.”

Asked who the favourite for the title was, she shot back, “C’mon, my self esteem would be quite low if I were to name another person.”

Venus will play Anna Ivanovic in the semifinals. The Serbian went through after her teenaged Czech opponent Nicole Vaidisova collapsed with a bout of nerves when leading 5-3 in the decider. Ivanovic won 4-6, 6-2, 7-5.

Mahesh Bhupathi and Sania Mirza were beaten 6-4, 6-4 by Marcin Matkowski of Poland and Cara Black of Zimbabwe in the second round of the mixed doubles competition.

Rupesh ousted

India’s Rupesh Roy was beaten in a close match by the eighth seeded American Kellen Damico in the boys’ singles event. Damico won the second round contest 6-3, 3-6, 10-6.

Late on Wednesday evening, Roy had got past Sean Thornley of Britain 5-7, 7-6(4), 10-7 in the first round.

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