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20th August Rafa lost in the quarter finals of Cincinnati to Nick Kyrgios, 2-6, 5-7 but... as of August 21st Rafa will regain the world number 1 ranking. Western & Southern Open, Cincinnati 2017
I hope that somewhere there is a parallel universe where Rafa is not forever shafted by unfair scheduling, women's matches going the distance when he's due on court and vengeful weather gods. Sadly, in this universe, that only happens to other players. He's played 5 matches in the US hard court swing and every one has been scheduled as the night match. Every. Single. One. He only got to see daylight in Cincinnati because it was raining so heavily that his late night match had to be postponed. Bad draws I can sort of live with (though it would be nice if he didn't get all the in-form players in his half for once) but the constant scheduling nightmare is getting on my already frayed nerves. #endofrant At least his first match was an easy, standard win over Richard Gasquet 6-3, 6-4. He was supposed to play Albert Ramos-Vinolas on Thursday night but heavy rain put paid to that. The match got rescheduled to the next day, not before 1pm after a ladies' singles match. This, of course, lasted for the best part of 3 hours so it was gone 3pm before Rafa got underway. He managed to win this one 7-6(1), 6-2. He was then left with a few scant hours to rest before taking on Nick Kyrgios. To be fair, he'd also had to finish his round of 16 match earlier in the day but he's 9 years younger, which has to make a difference. After his 2-6, 5-7 defeat, Rafa said, "He obviously is a tough match always, no? Nick is a great player, but I played bad, obviously, no? "I started the match well, and then I played a very bad game in the second set when he break me. And then I managed -- I was lucky. I don't know. I played some good points. He had some mistakes and I was able to be back in the match. And then I played terrible game. "So, yeah, was a bad match for me. Congrats to him. That's it. "No, no excuses. Nothing at all. I didn't play well, and if I don't play well, of course I cannot win against a player like Nick. That's it." Oh, well. The excellent news we can take away from his participation in this tournament is that Rafa has now regained the world number one ranking. Whatever others may say, it is richly deserved. ¡Vamos! |