• Chronicle.Tsitsipas lifts Nadal two sets and frustrates his dream of surpassing Federer's 20 greats

  • Karatsev: the 27-year-old revelation who had only won three ATP matches

Two mistakes can cost you your life.

Even more so against a magnificent rival.

They bring additional pain when they occur in the quarterfinals of a Grand Slam, with the near horizon of becoming the tennis player with the most titles in this category alone.

All of that happened to

Rafael Nadal

at the Australian Open.

The adversary accompanied by the deserved epithet was

Stefanos Tsitsipas

, who also, because everything adds up, took physical advantage of his 22 years, compared to the 34 of the Spaniard, and of having escaped the round of 16 match when his rival,

Matteo Berretini

,

could not play it

, victim of an abdominal injury.

Two wrong shots, which did not involve excessive difficulty, by the number two in the world, by the man who still has

Roger Federer

As a neighbor in the luxurious attic of the 20

majors

, in the tiebreaker of the third set, they gave rise to an unsuspected storm.

Tsitsipas won 3-6, 2-6, 7-6 (4), 6-4 and 7-5, in four hours and seven minutes.

Not even the most furious of his followers would have given a drachma for Tsitsipas until that moment, because the match belonged to Nadal, with a solvency almost comparable to that of the previous four in the competition, overlooking the best status of his opponent, sixth of the world, with two Grand Slam semifinals behind him and an ATP Finals title.

But the first

smash

, with 1-0 in favor and service of the Spanish, was long, and the second, this one with a boat, 3-4 already for

Tsitsipas

, also exceeded the limits of the track.

"I made some mistakes that I couldn't afford if I wanted to win, and from then on the game got complicated," admitted the victim, who had to momentarily leave the post-game press conference because of a muscle strain.

"I was flying like a bird"

It was from the

tie break

that Tsitsipas, tending to cyclothymia, a sanguine player with a Mediterranean temperament, found the point of inspiration and began to play as if he were putting the value of the loot down: loose, unprejudiced, free.

“I don't know what happened after the third set: I was flying like a bird, everything worked for me.

It is indescribable, "said the Greek, who two years ago, in the semifinals, could only scratch Nadal six games.

In that 2019, he had the pleasure of beating Federer in the quarterfinals.

Last fall, in the semi-finals at Roland Garros, he led

Novak Djokovic

to the fifth set

, also coming down two sets.

He had to adjust distances with Nadal, who, despite narrowing the field in his last two previous indoor matches, he had only defeated in one of his seven previous matches: Mutua Madrid Open, semifinals, 2019.

In the last two sets of the match that concerns us, Tsitsipas set up a fort around his service, where the maximum concession was the

break

point of

the final game of the match, after Nadal, a fighter until the end, as usual, had saved the first of the two

match points

to which he remedied.

Champion in 2009 and four times finalist (2010, 2012, 2014 and 2019), the left-hander leaves in the same instance as last year.

Then he fell to

Dominic Thiem

, 27, who, although almost five years older than Tsitsipas, is also to be regarded as one of the standard bearers of the

intelligentsia

.

Something is changing, albeit slowly.

The Spanish will have at Roland Garros, where he sports 13 glasses, another opportunity to consummate the

sorpasso

on Federer.

Before, this Thursday, (09.30 h.), Again with an audience in the stands, Djokovic, 17 of the greats, will face

Aslán Karatsev

, from the previous one, in the first semifinal.

A day later it will be Tsitsipas who seeks to prolong the ecstasy against

Daniil Medvedev

, who beat

Andrey Rublev

and has 19 consecutive victories.

He has not lost since last October 30, when Kevin Anderson beat him in the Vienna quarterfinals.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

Know more

  • Rafael Nadal

  • Novak Djokovic

  • Australian Open

  • tennis

  • Roland Garros

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Australian Open Tsitsipas lifts Nadal two sets and frustrates his dream of surpassing Federer's 20 greats in Melbourne

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