He suffered and sometimes had severe stomach pains.
But that didn’t stop Rafael Nadal from progressing at Wimbledon.
After a crazy thrill, he finally managed to beat Taylor Fritz 3-2 in sets.
Rafael Nadal He has had major injury problems in recent years. But despite this, he managed to win the French Open for the 14th time in early June.
After the success, he and Novak Djokovic were the big favorites to win this year Wimbledon.
But she was already on the verge of finishing in today’s quarter-final against Taylor Fritz, USA.
Nadal got off to a good start and advanced 3-0 in the first set but then lost everything and Fritz turned around and won 6-3.
Forced to expire
In the second set, Nadal went up again to 3-0 but lost again to 3-3. Later, the 36-year-old was forced out of the medical respite as he appeared to have problems with stretching of his abdominal muscles.
– It’s very hard to tell what it could be, it’s sad. Discovery expert Jonas Björkman said that since he played a forehand today, it was completely under the ice.
But despite the break, Nadal refused to give up and seemed to struggle a lot at times but the 36-year-old came back for the second set with a 7-5 score.
– Oddly enough, the level of play has been raised since Nadal returned from the break, says Fredrik Rosengren.
In the third set he couldn’t maintain the same level and Fritz won 6-3 and was leading 5-4 in the fourth set and seemed to be on his way to victory.
The movie won the thrill
Then Nadal got extra strength again and won 7-5 and the match went to the decisive fifth set as the players followed 3-3. Then Nadal broke the American and seemed to be heading for victory.
But Fritz refused to give up and broke 4-4 and everything had to be decided in a tiebreak. Nadal continued all his routine there, rose to 5-0, eventually won 10-4 and reached the semi-finals.
There he will meet Nick Kyrgios who won the quarter-final against Christian Garin 3-0 in groups.
Nadal is unlikely to win given his form after two sets, says Bjorkman.