Ever since his umpteenth return from injury, Nadal’s performances have been examined with a magnifying glass. 2015 has been a rocky road for the 14-time Grand Slam champion who doesn’t seem to be able to take his tennis up a couple of gears.
Against Diego Schwartzman, the Spaniard’s main problem this year was evident again: inconsistency. Nadal shows flashes of his greatness but struggles to keep it going for a sustained period of time and that’s how he squandered a 4-1 lead in the first set, but later exhibited his trademark fighting skills to turn around a 5-3 deficit in the tiebreak, thus sealing a vital first set.
It wasn’t convincing but it was enough. However, the Argentine was going toe to toe with the man from Majorca and broke Nadal’s opening service game in the second set, only to gift it back in the following game with a double fault. At 3-3, the Spaniard displayed some of those glimpses of devastating tennis, breaking Schwartzman and not dropping a single point in the following two games, thereby closing the set 6-3.
But once again this form was only temporary and Nadal had to really dig deep to save three break points in the opening game of the third set, before eventually losing his serve at 2-2. The match was anything but pretty, with very few jaw-dropping points and barely any lengthy exchanges. Nadal managed to break back at 4-3 and just about get over the finish line at 7-5 but he will probably not keep this encounter in the memory bank for long. The positive sign for Rafa is that he didn’t drop a set and managed to fight back from delicate situations in various stages of the match. The negative is that he’s going to have to do much more when he faces the big guns, starting with the next round when he clashes with Fabio Fognini, who’s already defeated Nadal on two occasions this season.
