Stan Wawrinka confessed to “bad behaving” last night after giving into the frustration of his 6-3, 6-2 defeat to Rafael Nadal and mooching around the back of the court like a teenager who had been grounded.
A promising first half-hour saw these two old rivals exchange breaks and wrestle for supremacy, but as soon as Nadal took the advantage by moving 5-3 up in the first set, Wawrinka lost his focus completely. On his commentary on the ATP world feed, Jason Goodall suggested that his lack of effort had become an embarrassment by the end.
“Was just a really bad day at the office,” a crestfallen Wawrinka said after a match in which he struck 35 unforced errors, many of them wild misfires on the first or second shot of a rally.
“Many little things, as I said, that wasn’t good today. For sure, if you look, it’s a really bad match. Bad behaving on the second set, going too fast [between points]. Things that are not too great on myself.”
Nadal, by contrast, put a patchy season behind him as he produced a fine defensive performance. Part of the reason why Wawrinka lost his cool was surely down to the difficulty of hitting through his opponent. A slow court allowed Nadal to scramble even the best shots back, and counter-attack when the opportunity was there. It was a compelling formula.
“Is obvious when you coming from a bad period, not everything will be like this,” said Nadal. “But in general, the dynamic is very positive. Every day for me now is an opportunity to enjoy on court, enjoy the competition, something that I missed for moments this year.”
Perhaps the pivotal moment came when Nadal faced break point in the second game of the second set. Wawrinka played a superb angled volley that would have been a winner against most opponents, but Nadal raced to the ball and poked a perfectly calibrated lob over the stranded Swiss.
If that famous Swiss backhand was malfunctioning, so too was the square “Jumbotron” screen that sits above the court. Halfway through the match, it released some of the confetti that is supposed to be saved for the presentation ceremony, forcing an ever-more testy Wawrinka to pause in his service action while the paper was collected by the ball-girls.
0 nhận xét:
Đăng nhận xét