MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) — Rafael Nadal entered his Australian Open quarterfinal with a 223-1 record when grabbing the first two sets of a Grand Slam match.
Thanks to his own mistakes — and some spirited play by Stefanos Tsitsipas — that mark is now 223-2.
A couple of uncharacteristically sloppy overheads and a framed backhand in a third-set tiebreaker began Nadal’s undoing, and his bid here for a men’s-record 21st major championship eventually ended Wednesday with 3-6, 2-6, 7-6 (4), 6-4, 7-5 loss to the younger, sharper Tsitsipas.
“Was little bit of everything, no? I missed a couple of balls in the tiebreak that I shouldn’t — that I could not — miss if I want to win. And that’s it,” said Nadal, who briefly left the Spanish portion of his post-match news conference after clutching at his cramping right hamstring.
“I have to go back home,” Nadal said, “and practice to be better.”
At his put-the-ball-where-he-wants-it best in the early going, Nadal went ahead rather easily, winning 27 consecutive points on his serve in one stretch and running his streak of consecutive sets won at major tournaments to 35, one shy of Roger Federer’s record for the professional era.
Nadal and Federer are currently tied at 20 Grand Slam singles titles, more than any other man in the history of a sport that dates to the late 1800s.
But Tsitsipas never wavered and that surprisingly poor tiebreaker by Nadal — thinking too far ahead, perhaps? — helped hand over the third set and begin the epic comeback.
“I started very nervous, I won’t lie,” the fifth-seeded Tsitsipas said. “But I don’t know what happened after the third set. I just flied like a little bird. Everything was working for me. The emotions at the very end are indescribable.”
As Tsitsipas played, in Nadal’s estimation, a “very, very high level of tennis” over the last two sets, the 34-year-old Spaniard’s play dipped considerably.
Nadal made a total of only 10 unforced errors in the first two sets combined, then 32 the rest of the way — 11 in the third, 14 in the fourth, seven in the fifth.
The only other occasion in which Nadal went from a two-set advantage to a defeat in a Slam came at the 2015 U.S. Open against Fabio Fognini (who just so happened to have lost to Nadal in the fourth round at Melbourne Park this year).
So now, instead of Nadal attempting to surpass Federer, it will be Tsitsipas — a 22-year-old from Greece with a flashy game — who will meet 2019 U.S. Open runner-up Daniil Medvedev in the semifinals Friday.
Neither Tsitsipas nor Medvedev has won a Grand Slam tournament.
In the other men’s semifinal, 17-time major champion and No. 1-ranked Novak Djokovic will face 114th-ranked qualifier Aslan Karatsev, who is making his Grand Slam debut.
