The men’s semi finals in the 2018 US Open began on the afternoon of Day Twelve, and the first of these featured defending champion Rafa Nadal (1) and 2009 champion Juan Martin del Potro (3).
In an error ridden beginning, both players dropped their opening serves, leaving Nadal to try again at 1-1.
Forehands under control, serves were then held comfortably, and after Nadal won the seventh game he had his knee strapped. At that point nothing appeared untoward.
However, in the ninth game, the tall Argentine struck and with his second break of the Spanish serve, gave himself the chance of delivering the first significant blow of the match.
The renowned fight of Nadal immediately came to the fore, and he wiped away the South American smiles quickly with a return break, repeating the pattern of the opening games. With a following hold of the Nadal serve, del Potro, after being on the brink of a one set lead, suddenly had to hold his serve to reach a tie break.
This he did, and proceeded to control the action from a well thought out and executed baseline strategy. A comfortable seven points to three result brought a renewed delight to Argentine faces and Juan Martin led by a set after all.
The second set was all del Potro, who took full advantage of a clearly hampered Nadal.
del Potro won 17 of 22 points on his serve, half of the points on Nadal’s serve, and hit 17 winners against just 3 unforced errors.
After breaking the Spanish serve a second time, from a ninth break point in the set, the set was over. More importantly, and sadly, so was Nadal’s tournament and defence of his title. The knee injury, apparently first noticed around the fourth game of set one, had become too debilitating for the world number one to be able to continue, and del Potro won 7-6(3) 6-2 (retired)
Hopefully, this injury will only sideline Nadal for a short while.
On a more positive note, Juan Martin del Potro finds himself in his second Grand Slam tournament final, and it is once more in New York, the scene of his 2009 triumph over Roger Federer
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