War Former tennis player Dolgopolov joins the Ukrainian Army
Nick Kyrgio
's is a runway show.
He usually compensates the price of admission with glimpses of the portent that he has inside with a good handful of tone outputs.
The Aussie embodies the wrath of underused talent.
Against
Rafael Nadal
he did not disappoint.
He exerted himself once more.
He gave war with sensational tennis in the first round and then blurred it with fits of anger when he blew the wind against Nadal, which is usually inevitable.
A priori he was presented as a candidate with many options to cut the Spanish's impressive streak at the start of the season, the best of his career.
He lacked, however, the punch needed to overcome the reigning
Australian Open
champion .
Nadal made him pay in decisive moments and scored the match 7-6, 5-7, 6-4 in two hours and 45 minutes.
He is already in the semifinals of
Indian Wells
, en route to his fourth straight title, not having lost a single match so far this year and 19 wins in a row.
And let the party continue.
The Australian started well.
He hit first in the third game despite Nadal's good start, with feelings similar to those of his match against the American
Reilly Opelka
.
Ahead, a challenge for the Spaniard: not only to recover equality but also to break the serve of a player who until now had not yielded his service throughout the tournament.
The Spaniard stepped up his attacks and began to unsettle Kyrgios, a consummate provocateur on and off the track.
He soon began his particular
show
of shouting in anger at the stands and hitting the ground with his rackets.
He even got into an argument with
Ben Stiller
, the actor.
He also resorted to unorthodox serves between the legs to surprise Nadal.
The Balearic, meanwhile, doing his own thing, as always, playing at a good level despite being behind and waiting for his opportunity.
It came in the ninth game, when Kyrgios was serving to take the first set at 5-4 in favor.
He conceded his first
break
point and gave it away on one of the few unforced errors he had made up to that point.
Things got interesting and the Californian public was enthusiastic.
And more with a tie-break at the gates.
Nadal put land in the middle quickly with a 5-0 that not only gave the world number 132 no chance but also made him lose his temper for the umpteenth time, screaming and letting out a string of outbursts.
The next point he gave away and the last one he could not even dispute after being penalized for accumulating
warnings
, including
"verbal abuse"
after a heated exchange with spectators.
Set for Nadal and sudden death in white.
In the air, the question of whether Kyrgios would be removed from the game from then on given his tendency to lower his arms and stop competing.
He chose to resist and give battle.
The resistance lasted much longer than it seemed after losing the first set, firm as a rock on serve and believing again in his options until forcing two set points after 53 minutes of battle.
He spent part of the set arguing with the chair umpire,
Carlos Bernades
, like a train about to derail, but kept his composure and tennis, not giving up a single break point in the entire set, which he closed at 7-5. to enter full of confidence in the definitive sleeve.
In fact, he had two points to make it 2-0 and he wasted them.
Nadal was not comfortable, forced to solve adverse situations in several bars of the set and with difficulties to score the games on his service.
Kyrgios, for his part, continued to dish out cannon shots, even in difficult moments with two break balls against him.
But he ended up giving in at the classic turning point, the seventh game.
The Australian lost his nerve, again, and the Balearic, insisting, to his own.
In the Indian Wells semi-final.
One more time.
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