Nadal loses to Khachanov but qualifies for Australian Open ’16’

Rafa Nadal passed the first possible test victoriously against the ‘silver’ Olympian from Tokyo and world No. 30 Karen Hatsanov, with the Spaniard taking the win 6-3, 6-2, 3-6, 6-1 in 2 clocked hours and 50 minutes, securing qualification for the 4th round of the Australian Open.

This was the 7th consecutive victory for the 35-year-old Spaniard, after the title he won at the 250v250 tournament in Melbourne, the 72nd at the Australian Open (72-15) while he was in the 4th round will be the tournament for the 15th time and for the 6th time in a row.

We remind you that Nadal failed to reach the “16” only twice, the first in 2004 (lost to Hewitt) and the second in 2016 (lost to Verdasco).

For one more game, Nadal excelled from serve position, winning 83% of the points from behind 1st serve (55/66), while the fact that he passed 67% of 1st serve gave him an opportunity to nudge the net approaching where it was impressive to finish the game on 23/26 (86%).

In the first 2 sets everything went perfectly for the Spaniard. In both the 1st and 2nd sets, Nadal “hit” Khatsanov’s serve at the start and found a quick break. The difference between the 2 sets was that the Spaniard found another in the 2nd (4-1), making his task even easier by taking a clear lead in the sets (2-0).

In the 3rd came the response of Khatsanov, who pressed for his only break of the game, with Nadal failing to find the first service and the Russian leading 3-1 and a little later 4-1 after initially wiping out 3 break points by Nadal.

The 35-year-old Spaniard did exactly the same thing immediately after holding serve (4-2) with Hatsanov from there and beyond, finding easy points on his serve, ending the set and reducing it to 2-1.

The 4th set got off to a similar start to the opening 2, with Nadal finding an early break (2-0) after two amazing points that came from unthinkable defences.

The Spaniard also won the 3rd game in a row (3-0), with the win leaning towards him, which was sealed with the new break he found in the 6th game (5-1).

Nadal’s serve picked up again (13/13 on the 1st serve), errors were reduced (5) and the No. 6 on board celebrated their 3rd win at this year’s Australian Open, but also their 8th in equal number of games against Khatsanov.

Source: Tennis24.gr.