The immortal Nadal is in the semi-finals! In a five-hour battle, he dealt with Shapovalov and stomach problems

This was quite a battle. Just as expected. Rafael Nadal got off to a great start in the quarterfinals against Denis Shapoval, but then stomach problems set in and the match was heading for a five-set battle. And in the end, the Spanish legend really dominated it.

It was expected to be one of the biggest battles of the Australian Open quarterfinals. And that’s what we got, even though it didn’t look like it at the start of the match.

Nadal got off to a great start. He took the serve away from Shapoval to take a 3-1 lead. He took the rest of the set and easily won 6-3. The second set followed a similar pattern. At 3-3, Rafa went on a break and eventually won 6-4.

The Spanish tennis player played great. Shapovalov couldn’t cope with his cannon lifted forehand, the Canadian player made a lot of mistakes, he couldn’t even cope with Nadal’s serve.

But from the third set on, something changed. Instead of Rafa attacking and finishing off Shapovalov in three sets, he just walked away the whole third set. The reason? The Spanish tennis player started to suffer from stomach problems that he couldn’t cope with.

The severe pain limited his running and serve, Shapovalov got on his horse, walked to the net a lot and the match started to turn. Nadal made an unbelievable number of double faults by his standards and Shapovalov won the third set 6-4.

Before the fourth set, Nadal asked for painkillers, but they didn’t take effect immediately. So Rafa had to stretch the fourth set a lot for the pills to take effect and he entered the fifth set at full strength. This worked, the three-quarter hour set helped, although Shapovalov dominated it 6-3 going into the fifth set.

But there, the Mallorca native was back to full health and it showed. He broke Shapovalov in the second game and went up 3-0. In the rest of the set, he was just guarding his serve and that was enough for him to advance to the semifinals.

Nadal defeated the young Canadian after 6-3, 6-4, 4-6, 3-6 and 6-3 sets. He will face the better of the Monfils-Berrettini pair in the semifinals of the Australian Open.

Source: Australian Open