Taylor Fritz

Rafael Nadal's Grand Slam story served up another dramatic chapter on Wednesday at Wimbledon, where the Spaniard held off a high-powered performance from ...

The match remained in the balance throughout an engrossing final set, but it was Nadal who raised his game under the pressure of the deciding-set tie-break. I need to be at 100% to keep having chances and that’s what I am going to try to do.” His next assignment in London is a semi-final with Nick Kyrgios, after the Australian was a 6-4, 6-3, 7-6(5) winner in his quarter-final matchup against Cristian Garin.

Rafael Nadal outlasted Taylor Fritz in five sets to reach a Wimbledon semifinal against Nick Kyrgios.

The Moscow-born Kazakh Rybakina beat 44th-ranked Ajla Tomljanovic of Australia 4-6, 6-2, 6-3 to make her first major semi. Kyrgios’ first breakthrough win came against Nadal in the fourth round of Wimbledon in 2014. Going to be a big challenge.” “I hope to be ready to play. “I had to find a way to serve a little bit different. His serve speed dropped.

Rafael Nadal kept his Grand Slam dream alive with a Wimbledon quarterfinal win over Taylor Fritz on Wednesday. He advances to play Nick Kyrgios.

He is looking to become the first man since 1969 to complete a calendar Grand Slam, winning all four major championships in the same year. “For a lot of moments I was thinking maybe I might not be able to finish the match,” Nadal said afterward. In fact, his father was urging him from the player’s box to call it a day.

Nadal moves on to the semifinals where he'll face Nick Kyrgios.

On a date 14 years after his renowned final with Roger Federer here, a date he said he never imagined seeing way back then at age 22, he played his first deciding 10-point super-tiebreaker, designated for fifth sets nowadays. He played it beautifully, snaring a quick 5-0 lead as all his experience kicked in against a player in his first Grand Slam quarterfinal. But he found his way through an opponent whose big year has brought him a world ranking of No. 14, if an opponent who was fantastic but not quite airtight enough.

Rafael Nadal's chance at a calendar Grand Slam is still alive after he battled through an injury to defeat Taylor Fritz in the Wimbledon quarterfinals.

“It’s not about that I don’t want to answer your question, but in the same time sometimes, I am tired about myself, all the issues that I am having. “I am a little bit tired to talk about my body,” he told reporters after the match. The 36-year-old left the court in the middle of the second set to get treatment.

Rafael Nadal prevailed over the American Taylor Fritz in a fluctuating five-set quarter-final at Wimbledon to set up a semi-final against Nick Kyrgios.

Having squandered a break point that would have set him up, Nadal served to stay in the championships after nearly three hours of fretful struggle at 4-5, sealing it with his fourth ace of the match. But he threw it in the bin on his own serve, Fritz held and Nadal matched him, landing them up in the 10-point tie-break after 4hr 8min. Nadal broke early in the fourth set and held to lead 4-2, but overcooked a forehand to hand back the advantage at 4-4. Those ambitions took a hit in the eighth game, when a double fault put him 3-5 down, and Fritz punished him with two more aces to take the set. He is a win against Nick Kyrgios away from the final – possibly for a 60th time against Novak Djokovic – and the chance to win his third grand slam title on the spin. Taylor Fritz, 6ft 5in of towering American self-belief, did his best to bury a wounded legend here on Wednesday, but the 36-year-old Rafael Nadal would not stay down – against the advice of his worried father – and prevailed over five fluctuating sets to reach his eighth Wimbledon semi-final.

Nadal struggled with an apparent abdominal injury in his quarterfinal match against Fritz, a rising American star who pushed Nadal to five sets.

He has been wearing a patch on his lower abdomen during the tournament that appeared to be an anti-inflammatory patch. Nadal played with what turned out to be a stress fracture in one of his ribs, which limited his ability to serve and strike his groundstrokes at full force. But as the match extended past four hours, he regained control and finished off the victory with a classic forehand winner from inside the baseline, complete with his bolo-whip finish behind his left ear. “I hope to be ready to play it; that’s the first thing,” Nadal said in his on-court interview. “For a lot of moments, I was thinking maybe I will not be able to finish the match,” he said, speaking to the Centre Court crowd. But for all his power and hustle, he could not hold his two-set-to-one lead and quickly lost command of the decisive tiebreaker, falling behind, 0-5, as Nadal summoned the shotmaking that has made him a 22-time Grand Slam singles champion.