When Nadal raised the Wimbledon trophy for a second time, he knew that there was only one achievement he needed: win the US Open. He won the Australian Open once. He won Wimbledon twice. He’s won the French 5 times. Twice, he’s reached the US Open semifinals.
Historically, Nadal’s clay court victories has meant that he’s entered the US Open with wobbly knees and fatigue. Last year, he didn’t play Wimbledon and lost early in the French. When he came back at Montreal, he told the media not to expect his best form. And it turned out, he was hiding an injury to his abdominal muscles. This caused some problems at the US Open, but he still managed to get to the semifinals. That injury, most likely, lead to a shellacking by Juan Martin del Potro.
This year, he was injured at the Australian Open, so he played minimally until Indian Wells, then he played great on clay after nearly a year of not winning a tournament.
This year, Nadal came into the US Open the healthiest he’s been in a while. Despite some rust in Toronto and Cincinnati, which Nadal blamed on playing too aggressively, Nadal has adjusted. He’s dialed back the aggression and gone for more consistency.
This has meant he’s yet to drop a set, and until the Verdasco match, he had also yet to be broken. Verdasco broke him early in the first set, but then didn’t see a break point the rest of the match. Nadal was back to fetching impossible shots and Verdasco was simply frustrated, making way too many errors to bother Nadal.
In the other match, it looked like Wawrinka might buck the trend of players that fade in the next round after playing 5 sets. Wawa had beaten Sam Querrey in 5 sets, but got up 2 sets to 1 against Youzhny. However, he got down a break early and didn’t seem concerned about trying to break back in the fourth set. When he got a break down in the fifth, Wawa was done. He did get the break back, but Youzhny broke again and Wawa couldn’t get the break back one more time.
Youzhny beat Rafa back in 2006 in the quarterfinals and reached his only US Open semi. He reaches the semi again, but it would take a miracle for Youzhny to beat Rafa. I don’t think he has the game to really bother Rafa enough.
