Four-time champion Rafael Nadal ended a three-year, seven-match losing streak against Novak Djokovic to reach the final of the Madrid Open.<\/p>\n
The Spaniard, 30, won 6-2 6-4 to claim his first victory over the Serb since the 2014 French Open final.<\/p>\n
Nadal improved his record on clay this year to 14-0 and will face Austrian Dominic Thiem or Uruguay’s Pablo Cuevas in Sunday’s final.<\/p>\n
Kristina Mladenovic plays Simona Halep in Saturday’s women’s final.<\/p>\n
Nadal confirmed his return to form with a long-awaited win over Djokovic, his 24th in 50 career meetings.<\/p>\n
“It is a great result,” he said. “To win against Novak by that score you have to be playing very well, otherwise it’s impossible.<\/p>\n
“It was an important match for me. I lost a lot of times in a row. To break that means there are always nerves.<\/p>\n
“The circumstances nowadays are completely different compared to those seven matches that occurred before.<\/p>\n
“I think that the last two years perhaps haven’t been my best two years. For Novak, they were really good years.”<\/p>\n
Djokovic, playing his first tournament since splitting with his long-time coaching team, won just four points in the opening four games as he fell 4-0 down to a rejuvenated Nadal.<\/p>\n
There were more positive signs for the Serb in the second set as he recovered an early break of serve, punching his fist in delight, but Nadal would quickly re-establish the advantage.<\/p>\n
The Spaniard came through a tense final game, fending off a break point before converting his third match point and closing on a fifth Madrid title.<\/p>\n
“He deserved to win,” said Djokovic.<\/p>\n
“It wasn’t a very high quality of tennis from my side. I made a lot of unforced errors.<\/p>\n
“His quality was very high. He managed to do whatever he wanted really, especially in the first set.”<\/p>\n
–<\/p>\n
Source: BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Four-time champion Rafael Nadal ended a three-year, seven-match losing streak against Novak Djokovic to reach the final of the Madrid Open. The Spaniard, 30, won 6-2 6-4 to claim his first victory over the Serb since the 2014 French Open final. Nadal improved his record on clay this year to 14-0 and will face Austrian […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[7098,7099,7100],"class_list":["post-319001","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-djokovic","tag-madrid-open","tag-nadal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/319001","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=319001"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/319001\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=319001"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=319001"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=319001"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}