With the years second grand slam French Open round the corners players are sweating it out in the clay of Rome in the Italian open. The Italian Open has all the top tennis names fighting it out. As the tournament is reaching into the final stages a clear picture of who will dominate this year on the clays of Roland-Garros is becoming more and more obvious. And by now anyone would have guessed it, none other than Serbian World no. 1 Novak Djokovic.
The highlight of the ongoing tournament came in the 3rd round match on Friday as the king of clay Rafael Nadal took on Djokovic. In what was billed to be a blockbuster lived up to its name.
There has been no other player who has been more successful that Rafael Nadal on the Roman soil. He has a record seven titles, most final appearances, most consecutive matches won, Most consecutively titles won and a few more under his belt.
But he was up against Noval Djokovic who he has not beaten since French Open of 2014. A streak of 6 matches before this weeks 3rd round playoff.
And this time as well Nadal came short and Djokovic extended his streak over Nadal to seven matches now. Nadal was surely into the match from the word go. He broke the Serb in the 5th game but the Serb fought back to level it at 4-4, and then finally went on to take the set in the 12th game. Nadal saved 3 set points but couldn’t managed to save the fourth and conceded the first set to Djokovic at 7-5 after 77 minutes of some hard hitting tennis.
In the 2nd set Nadal broke back in the first game itself and was leading at 5-4 only for Djokovic to come back and save as many as five set points, to go on and break Nadal service game and force a tie breaker. The set had progressed with both men exchanging blows at each other but it was finally the Serb which came out strong with a minibreak at 4-2 in the tie breaker and went on to take the 2nd set 7-6. And scripting a heroic 3rd round win over crowd Favorite Nadal in starigh sets 7-6, 7-6 (6/4) to set up a semifinal match with the Japanese sensation Kei Nishikori. A win over him could have a possible faceoff with Andy Murray in the Final who would be looking forward to settling some score after the Madrid Masters drubbing.