Borna Ćorić beats Spanish tennis player Rafael Nadal 7:6(9), 4:6, 6:3 and advanced to the 3rd round of the Masters Series ATP tournament in Cincinnati. Ćorić thus spoils Nadal’s return to tennis in his comeback match, the first after Wimbledon, when he surrendered to Nick Kyrgios in the semi-final.
In a match lasting 2 hours and 51 minutes, Ćorić achieved the greatest success of the season, proving that he is fit again after a long break due to injury. After a dramatic first set in which both players saved two set-points each, Ćorić reached an important break in the middle of the third set, which was enough for him to win.
“This is special. I haven’t been here for the past two years; I haven’t played in big tournaments in front of a lot of spectators. Honestly, I was just looking forward to playing this match, and the fact that I won is crazy,” said Ćorić, who now faces Robert Bautista Agut.
“It will be an interesting match. I will have to be aggressive, especially because I played against Nadal for a long time and finished late,” said Ćorić, who leads 5:4 against Bautista Agut in head-to-head matches.
This was the fifth match between Ćorić and who many consider the best tennis player of all time. Borna Ćorić has a 3:2 advantage in head-to-head matches against the Spaniard. The Croatian tennis player, who fell to 152nd place in the ATP ranking due to injuries, and was once the 12th tennis player in the world, defeated Nadal in the Basel quarterfinals in 2014 (6:2, 7:6(4) and then two years later in Cincinnati he won 6:1, 6:3. He lost to Nadal at the US Open in 2015 and the Masters in Canada in 2017.
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