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Kevin Anderson gets ready to serve to top-ranked Raphael Nadal at the Rogers Cup in Toronto.
In a much stronger start from the previous night, Raphael Nadal had little difficulty in a straight sets victory, 6-2 and 7-6, over South African Kevin Anderson at the Rogers Cup in Toronto.
With the win, Nadal advances to the quarter-finals and will take on German Philipp Kohlschreiber this afternoon.
The strongest part of Nadal’s game was back on track Thursday night as he blew forehand after forehand past a stunned Anderson in the first set. Anderson, ranked 87 in the ATP rankings, looked helpless at times as he could only watch Nadal’s forehand breeze by him – it was simply too powerful and quick for him to handle. Nadal even nailed a great lob over Anderson for a point that delighted the crowd at centre court.
Nadal made short work of the first set, taking it 6-2. This led many in the crowd to believe that the Spaniard would have an easy night and take the second set in quick fashion as well.
Nadal gets ready to serve the ball early in the second set.
But the 24 year-old Anderson wasn’t ready to step aside just yet, as he came out strong in the second set. Anderson re-grouped and used his serve more effectively against Nadal, giving ‘Rafa’ lots of difficulty throughout the rest of the match.
“After that first set wasn’t easy to return the second serve inside because he change it a lot, the directions and he serve it with slice, he serve it with topspin, so wasn’t easy,” said Nadal.
Down 4-2 in the second set, Anderson held serve as he whizzed two aces past Nadal to close the gap to 4-3. The South African stepped up his baseline game as he began to produce some powerful forehand winners of his own. After breaking Nadal’s serve in the next game, Anderson held serve once again to go ahead 5-4.
“It seemed like I had the match under control in the second (set), 4-2,” said Nadal. “But I had two mistakes with my forehand, and he played two good points. And after that was really tough second set.”
Eventually, the set would go to tiebreak which was Nadal’s second in as many nights. With the previous night’s marathon tiebreaker fresh on his mind, Nadal stormed out to a 3-0 lead in the tiebreak before Anderson fought back once again to close the gap to 3-2. However, in the end, Nadal would hang on to win the tiebreak 8-6 and advance to the next round.
Nadal slices a forehand over the net to Anderson mid-way through the second set.
“I am happy how I played,” added Nadal. “Especially the first set. It was very good.”
Results
A lot of big matches took place on the hard courts at Rexall Centre on Thursday, including a couple of big upsets. Un-seeded Argentinean David Nalbandian continued his comeback as well as his dominance over 5th seed Robin Soderling of Sweden by winning in 4-6, 6-4 and 6-1. Nalbandian has now won 6 of their past 7 meetings and has extended his winning streak to 11 matches.
In the other upset, un-seeded Jeremy Chardy of France won in straight sets over 6th seeded Nikolay Davydenko, 6-3 and 6-2. All other top seeds did advance in singles play, including Novak Djokovic, Roger Federer, Andy Murray and Tomas Berdych.
Anderson gets ready to return a forehand as Nadal watches his every move.
In doubles action, Canadian Daniel Nestor faced off against his former playing partner Mark Knowles. Top-ranked Nestor and his Serbian partner Nenad Zimonjic eliminated Knowles and Radek Stepanek in a tiebreak, 10-6, after splitting the first two sets 4-6 and 6-3. Seeded 4th, India’s Mahesh Bhupathi and Bulgarian Max Mirnyi also advanced with a 6-3, 7-5 straight sets win over Robert Lindstedt and Horia Tecau.
Thursday’s Results
Singles – Third Round
[1] R Nadal (ESP) d [Q] K Anderson (RSA) 62 76(6) [2] N Djokovic (SRB) d V Hanescu (ROU) 63 64 [3] R Federer (SUI) d M Llodra (FRA) 76(2) 63 [4] A Murray (GBR) d [15] G Monfils (FRA) 62 06 63 D Nalbandian (ARG) d [5] R Soderling (SWE) 46 64 61 J Chardy (FRA) d [6] N Davydenko (RUS) 63 62 [7] T Berdych (CZE) d O Dolgopolov (UKR) 63 67(5) 64 P Kohlschreiber (GER) d [Q] Y Lu (TPE) 67(5) 75 60
Doubles – Quarterfinals J Benneteau (FRA) / M Llodra (FRA) d [5] J Melzer (AUT) / P Petzschner (GER) 64 63
Second Round [1] D Nestor (CAN) / N Zimonjic (SRB) d M Knowles (BAH) / R Stepanek (CZE) 46 63 10-6 [4] M Bhupathi (IND) / M Mirnyi (BLR) d R Lindstedt (SWE) / H Tecau (ROU) 63 75 F Cermak (CZE) / M Mertinak (SVK) d [8] J Knowle (AUT) / A Ram (ISR) 36 64 10-7
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