Totally off his tennis for almost two sets, Rafael Nadal ended up defeating Fabio Fognini on the night of Thursday to Friday to advance to the third round of the US Open.
A victory marked by a rare game incident.
It took the slow motion of a scene that almost no one could see at real speed, to understand what the Spaniard was suffering from in the middle of the fourth set, hands on his temples, before lying down on the ground.
Unbalanced after a backhand, he could not control his racquet, which bounced on the ground and then hit the bridge of his nose with the slice.
Ouch.
An unfortunate rebound and Nadal gets his racquet in the nose đŹ #USOpen2022 pic.twitter.com/GsniDS8OiJ
â Eurosport France (@Eurosport_FR) September 2, 2022
"I was a little stunned and it hurt a little," he said.
âIt had happened to me before with a golf club, but never with a tennis racket!
âA little blood flowed from this cut, but after putting on a bandage, Nadal the warrior resumed his march forward and finished a job that he had started very badly 2h38 earlier (2-6, 6 -4, 6-2, 6-1).
Gasquet in the 3rd round
Faced with the first player to have managed to go up two sets against him in a Grand Slam to finally beat him, in 2015 already at Flushing Meadows, the 36-year-old Mallorcan was out of play for a set and a half, until being trailed 6- 2, 4-2.
The course of the 36-year-old Spaniard is for the moment uneven.
He had already dropped a first set in the 1st round.
He will face in the next round, on the night of Saturday to Sunday, the Frenchman Richard Gasquet (91st), against whom he has never lost in 17 confrontations on the main circuit.
âRegardless of the past, it's a chance for both of them to go through to the round of 16 and I will have to play a little more at the level where I play in training,â said the Taurus of Manacor.