The question was formulated positively, but the answer summed up the problem. “I have to get better,” Rafael Nadal said on Center Court after the moderator wanted to know from the record Grand Slam champion what he particularly liked about his performance.
Nadal is fully aware that he had a lot more room to go up than down against Ricardas Berankis. There were a number of statistics to back this up.
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Nadal also made more so-called “unforced errors” (39:35) than the Lithuanian. The French Open winner also looked for the way to the net much less often than his opponent – and had a lower success rate (7 out of 14) than Berankis (22 out of 30).
Zverev on Nadal: “Something bothers me”
“Rafa is too passive, even with footwork. Something is bothering me about his movement, hopefully it’s not his foot,” Mischa Zverev remarked in the middle of the first sentence.
After all: There was nothing to indicate that the veteran had problems with his injured left foot.
After the game, Nadal cited other reasons for his shaky performance against world No. 106. “Every day is a challenge for me, I hadn’t played on grass for about three years before Wimbledon,” explained the favorite.
Nadal: “It got better in the fourth set”
But he improved after “too many mistakes at the beginning of the match”.
“It got better in the fourth set, my serve came. It’s just a process,” emphasized Nadal, who now meets Lorenzo Sonego from Italy in the fight for a place in the round of 16.
There is no need to worry that the Wimbledon winner of 2008 and 2010 will not regain his form in time and fail early. “Rafa fights his way into tournaments like this,” said Zverev: “He knows how it’s done.”
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