Rafael Nadal had to fight tooth and nail but he managed to carve out a victory over Australia’s Nick Kyrgios to advance to the last-eight stage of the 2020 Australian Open.
The Spaniard was a break up and serving for the match in the fourth set but Kyrgios came back to level the set at 5-5. He held on to make it 6-5 before Nadal took the fourth set into a tiebreaker.
Unfortunately for Kyrgios, who had come back to level the match earlier at a set apiece, he was broken on the eighth point of this tiebreaker and Nadal finished it off with a couple of match-points.
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Nadal broke Kyrgios very early in the first set, taking a 3-1 lead and then held on to his own serve throughout the set, the Aussie failing to get close to breaking his opponent back. And when Kyrgios started things off in the second set with a very difficult hold, which included facing a couple of break-points, things looked like they were headed in one direction.
However, Kyrgios held on and then much like what Nadal had done in the first set, broke his opponent to go 3-1 up in the second. From there on, it was all Kyrgios in the set and he levelled things off 6-3 by winning the second 6-3.
The Spaniard brought a much better service game to the third set and held most games without any issues before Kyrgios made to work him hard in the ninth game. Nadal returned the compliment next game but the set went into a tie-breaker, and the Spaniard led 4-1 at one stage.
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Kyrgios came back to level it at 6-6 but Nadal wrapped the set up with the next two points. Nadal will now take on Dominic Thiem in the quarterfinal after the Austrian cruised past Gael Monfils in another fourth round match.
Speaking at the end of the match, Nadal said:
“Well, what can I say about Nick? When he is playing today with his positive attitude, he brings a lot fo positive things to our sport. So I encouraging him to keep working like this because he is one of the highest talents that we have on our tour and I like the Nick Kyrgios during the whole of this tournament.”
Also advancing to the Australian Open quarterfinal was Alexander Zverev, who defeated Andrey Rublev in straight sets. He won 6-4, 6-4, 6-4 to set up his last-eight match against Wawrinka. Wawrinka had earlier edged out Daniil Medvedev in a thrilling five-setter.
With this win, Zverev ended Rublev’s 15-match winning streak, having won all his matches at the Davis Cup late last year and following it up with back to back titles at Doha and Adelaide. It also meant Zverev now has a shot at his third Grand Slam quarterfinal and the first in Melbourne.
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