Nadal Beats Murray To Face Djokovic In Wimbledon Final
Rafael Nadal dashed Andy Murray’s hopes of reaching his first Wimbledon final today, beating him 5-7, 6-2,6-2,6-4. Djokovic overcame Tsonga in the other semi-final setting up a mouthwatering Wimbledon final.
It all went to the form book today as the No.1 seed and defending champion, Rafael Nadal, put out the no. 4 seed Andy Murray and Novak Djokovic, the no. 2 seed beat Jo-Wilfried Tsonga.
Andy Murray has now lost a semi-final at Wimbledon 3 times in succession and must be deeply disappointed that he couldn’t build on a first set lead.
Although nursing an injury that clearly bothered him at the start of the match, Murray made a flying start against the no.1 seed. Serving and returning well to clinch the first set 7-5 to great cheers from the home supporters.
The momentum stayed with Murray at the start of the second set and at 2-1 and 15-30, he had a great chance to get 2 break points on the Nadal serve, but he missed what can only be described as a ‘sitter’, bringing Nadal back to 30-30.
That point seemed to stick in Murray’s mind and incredibly lost the next 7 games in a row. For the rest of the match he never again reached the heights of tennis he had previously been playing.
Murray’s serve, which had been so reliable suddenly wasn’t firing, the unforced errors rapidly grew while on the other side of the net, Nadal was getting better.
Fired up by Murray’s disintegrating game Nadal started pushing his serve percentage higher and kept his unforced errors remarkably low.
It all played out in four sets and it seems that if Murray wants to win a Grand Slam he will have to learn to have a Nadal like focus and iron will to win.
Technically, at the top of the mens game there is not very much in it, perhaps Federer is the most technically gifted and yet he was seeded 3rd and eventually knocked out by 12th seed Tsonga. Something else is obviously important and Nadal has it in spades.
Tsonga meanwhile played Djokovic in the earlier semi-final of the day.
It took Djokovic just over 3 hours to win the game 7-6 (7-4), 6-2, 6-7 (9-11), 6-3 after he played a much more consistent game than Tsonga.
Tsonga sometimes showed flashes of brilliance but it wasn’t consistent enough and he mixed it with too many errors.
Much like Murray, Tsonga’s game deserted him at times although he showed that he could mix it with the best if he manages to get some consistency.
Mr. Consistency himself, Djokovic, managed to maintain a high standard throughout and did enough to make sure that the match didn’t go to 5 sets.
He has now only lost 1 match in 50 over a period of 7 months and will take the World number 1 ranking away from Nadal on Monday no matter what happens in the Wimbledon Final on Sunday.
It should be a cracker of a game.
Photo: Corrine06
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