It’ll be a tough battle against the best returner in the world. RAFA will have to step up his game in order to advance. Today was a good showing, hopefully he can maintain a high level match to match which only gets tougher with age. I think he’ll need to win in straight sets.
This is his first year playing at the ATP level. His serve is a nothinburger, but his groundstrokes are solid. Made the finals at Rio and Bucharest earlier this year and then beat PCB before losing his second match to Machac at the French Open. I'll be interested to see how aggressive Nadal tries to be with his return of serve to get on top of those points.
if Rafa gets by this guy, there is nobody in the draw.. this is now RAFA's tournament to win as long as he's healthy. This is as ideal of prep as rafa can have before the Paris olympics.....
also ,, can Rafa win the US open and french open 2025 and surpass Novak in GS record ?
I missed the part where Djokovic was selected as the replacement of Navone.
Hopefully no. If he can regain his form a bit, and doesn't risk injuries on HCs, I'd say he can win one more M1000 on clay.
Nope I think he’s done with big titles
We'd see about that in the upcoming 10 months or so.
2 players will defeat him handily
His BH is soooo powerless today.
Lol that was a fun point, but if I'm not mistaken Navone was the one who started to moonball.
