Seems like Steve Darcis is the new Lukas Rosol. While Rosol was tumbling out of the first round of Wimbledon, Nadal was finding himself in a heap of trouble against a little heralded Belgian player, 29 years of age, ranked 110 in the world trying to take Nadal out of Wimbledon early for the second year in a row.
Whenever Nadal is about to lose, he finds it hard to break. Indeed, Darcis had the first break in the opening set, but unlike Rosol who was unable to close out the first set in his match last year, Darcis charged the net and watching Nadal make errors on his way to the first set tiebreak win.
They say serve and volley is dead, but maybe not quite dead. Darcis, a 29 year old veteran, knew he wasn’t going to beat Nadal from the baseline, so he came to net. The second set also went to a tiebreak with one trade of break each. This marathon went to Darcis 10-8.
Apparently the knees, which Nadal said he was going to stop talking about during press interviews, were giving Nadal issues. He chose not to talk about it, but perhaps all that work to play on clay and the short turnaround time between the French and Wimbledon, came at a price, and much like last year, Nadal seemed unable to extricate himself out of this mess.
With Nadal’s loss, Federer’s section of the draw becomes a lot more bearable, though he still has the tougher end of the deal playing Murray rather than Ferrer, but all things considered, Murray is 2 and Federer is 3, so even fans who prefer the number 1 seed have an advantage would say this seeding works out.
One expects Nadal to take a lot of time off once again, though perhaps not 7 months worth.
So this upset might be as big or bigger than the Rosol upset.
