The Spanish Rafael Nadalthe sixth player in the world at the moment, took another step towards his goal of winning his second Australian Openby overcoming this Sunday the round of 16, while his compatriots Pablo Carreño and Paula Badosa were eliminated in that instance.
The Canadian Denis Shapovalov, fourteenth in the ATP ranking, gave the surprise by defeating the third world player, the German Alexander Zverev, one of the candidates for the title, and will be Nadal’s rival in the quarterfinals, who easily beat the Frenchman Adrian Mannarino .
for title 21
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Nadal, twenty-time Grand Slam champion, who is looking for a 21st title that would place him alone with the record for wins in major tournaments, only struggled in the first set, in which he had to play a 28-minute tie-break, to prevail by 7-6 (16/14), 6-2 and 6-2.
“The first set was nerve-wracking. I was a bit lucky at the end of the tie-break,” Nadal said of his match against Mannarino, which lasted 2 hours and 40 minutes.
“I am very happy to have survived that first set, without any doubt”, adding that having quickly achieved a break in the second set had been “very important”, in the final step to victory. But if Nadal responded in the round of 16, the surprise came with the defeat of German Zverev against Shapovalov, 6-3, 7-6 (7/5), 6-3.
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