With the entire US Open and tennis world still reeling from Roger Federer’s shocking loss to John Millman in the early hours of Tuesday morning, the late hours of Tuesday night held another epic.
With no more Federer in the draw, the odds-on favorites to reach the final were Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic. Djokovic faces the Federer-conquering Millman Wednesday night, but Nadal had to get by Dominic Thiem in the final match on Tuesday. The last time this pair met was in the French Open final this spring, which Nadal easily won. Nadal is obviously much better on clay than hard courts–but so is Thiem.
The 25-year-old Austrian had faced Nadal three times this year before the US Open. All three matches were straight-set affairs, with Nadal winning in Rome and Roland Garros in dominant fashion, but Thiem did upset the Spaniard in Madrid. The rising star is obviously one of the most talented youngsters on tour, so no one expected this match to be easy for Nadal. What Thiem actually managed to do, though, no one expected either.
The match
Thiem came out absolutely en fuego. Everything he did was absolutely untouchable. His groundstrokes were absolutely brutal. He played farther behind the baseline than Nadal did, but he consistently hit the ball so hard and cleanly that he would win points from back there. His first serve was unreturnable–and when Nadal did get it back, Thiem would close down the point very quickly. No matter what Nadal did, he could not break through Thiem. It showed, very quickly. In just a very short 24 minutes, Thiem took the first set from Nadal 6-0.
It was only the fourth 0-6 set Nadal has played in a Grand Slam in his career. Andy Roddick “bageled” Nadal back at the US Open in 2004–before Nadal had even won his first Major title. Federer won a 6-0 set against him in the 2006 Wimbledon final, and Tomas Berdych accomplished the feat at the 2015 Australian Open. Nadal lost all three of those matches. In fact, he only won one set combined in all three of those. The Spaniard had a lot of history to reverse if he wanted to win this match.
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The second set was a different story, however. Nadal played a little better, and managed to get a bit of a rhythm in the match. It wasn’t much–he still could do nothing against the Austrian’s serve–but Nadal at least managed to keep things even until midway through the set. After that, Thiem’s nerves kicked in. He threw away a service game, giving Nadal a chance to serve for the set at 5-3. The #9 seed broke right back, but he followed it up by throwing away another service game, losing the set 4-6.
Thiem came out in the third set much more settled. He was not quite playing at the level that dominated in the first set, but he was once again holding serve easily. The Austrian put Nadal on notice when he came back from 0-40 down to force a break point chance (which he couldn’t take) with Nadal serving at 2-2; one game later, he came back from 15-40 to break Nadal and take a 4-3 lead. However, the 25-year-old got broken while serving for the set at 5-4, then got broken again at 5-6 to lose the set.
Thiem fights back
If you thought that Thiem was going to go away quietly after dropping the second and third sets, you were sorely mistaken. Thiem came out firing in the fourth set just like the first, breaking Nadal early in the set. He played yet another poor service game to give the break back, but stayed tough and forced a tiebreak. The Austrian earned a minibreak on the opening point of the tiebreak, which he never relinquished–though he did get help from a poor Nadal volley late in the tiebreak. Over three hours after Thiem won the first set, he forced a decider.
Thiem saved two break points while serving at 2-2, and that really seemed to inspire him. Even as the match stretched well over four hours, the #9 seed peppered shot after shot. Sometimes he missed, but he kept the match on his racket as much as he could. At the biggest of moments in the final set, his aggressiveness and groundstrokes never let him down. At 5-5, a few loose points (and a double fault) meant that Thiem faced three break points. He saved all three with excellent serves–one of them a second serve–and took the next two points to hold. Nadal responded by holding at love, and we were off to a fifth-set tiebreak to decide an absolutely epic match.
Nadal opened the tiebreak with a minibreak on a deep forehand, but gave it right back to Thiem on a forehand error on the following point. Thiem again gave away a minibreak with a poor error to go down 2-3, but got it right back once again with a brilliant passing shot. Nadal held onto his serve after that, though, and Thiem missed an overhead while down 5-6 to lose the tiebreaker and the match.
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