Nadal wears down Ferrer to reach Rome final

May 20, 2012 |

Reuters

Rome

Tags:

Five-times champion Rafa Nadal wore down fellow Spaniard David Ferrer 7-6, 6-0 on Saturday to reach the final of the Rome Masters.

The second seed came from 3-1 down to win the first set and then ran away with the second to set up a final against either world number one Novak Djokovic or number two Roger Federer.

Sixth seed Ferrer had the better of an 86-minute first set, but could not push home his advantage as Nadal won the tiebreak 8-6, before running away with the second.

"At the start of the match, David was playing unbelievably," Nadal said afterwards. "My thought was that the best news for me would probably to be level at 3-3.

"After the first six, seven games then it was more equal because before that he was playing better than me."

Nadal said he had not played as well as he did in beating Czech Tomas Berdych in the previous round, but used his mental strength to get through the match.

"I was very happy with how I was mentally, because I stayed focused all the time.

"In the second set I started a little bit better and he was a little tired, which is normal after such a difficult first set."

Nadal has now beaten Ferrer in 12 straight clay-court matches, and the world number six admitted he did not know how to beat him on his favourite surface.

"I was very close in the first set, but against Rafael you have to take your chances and I could not do it," he said.

Post new comment

<form action="/comment/reply/153264" accept-charset="UTF-8" method="post" id="comment-form"> <div><div class="form-item" id="edit-name-wrapper"> <label for="edit-name">Your name: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <input type="text" maxlength="60" name="name" id="edit-name" size="30" value="Reader" class="form-text required" /> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-mail-wrapper"> <label for="edit-mail">E-Mail Address: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <input type="text" maxlength="64" name="mail" id="edit-mail" size="30" value="" class="form-text required" /> <div class="description">The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.</div> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-comment-wrapper"> <label for="edit-comment">Comment: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <textarea cols="60" rows="15" name="comment" id="edit-comment" class="form-textarea resizable required"></textarea> </div> <fieldset class=" collapsible collapsed"><legend>Input format</legend><div class="form-item" id="edit-format-1-wrapper"> <label class="option" for="edit-format-1"><input type="radio" id="edit-format-1" name="format" value="1" class="form-radio" /> Filtered HTML</label> <div class="description"><ul class="tips"><li>Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.</li><li>Allowed HTML tags: <a> <em> <strong> <cite> <code> <ul> <ol> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd></li><li>Lines and paragraphs break automatically.</li></ul></div> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-format-2-wrapper"> <label class="option" for="edit-format-2"><input type="radio" id="edit-format-2" name="format" value="2" checked="checked" class="form-radio" /> Full HTML</label> <div class="description"><ul class="tips"><li>Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.</li><li>Lines and paragraphs break automatically.</li></ul></div> </div> </fieldset> <input type="hidden" name="form_build_id" id="form-5e102d978bdeb98eb6b99df76f622d68" value="form-5e102d978bdeb98eb6b99df76f622d68" /> <input type="hidden" name="form_id" id="edit-comment-form" value="comment_form" /> <fieldset class="captcha"><legend>CAPTCHA</legend><div class="description">This question is for testing whether you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.</div><input type="hidden" name="captcha_sid" id="edit-captcha-sid" value="80371917" /> <input type="hidden" name="captcha_response" id="edit-captcha-response" value="NLPCaptcha" /> <div class="form-item"> <div id="nlpcaptcha_ajax_api_container"><script type="text/javascript"> var NLPOptions = {key:'c4823cf77a2526b0fba265e2af75c1b5'};</script><script type="text/javascript" src="http://call.nlpcaptcha.in/js/captcha.js" ></script></div> </div> </fieldset> <span class="btn-left"><span class="btn-right"><input type="submit" name="op" id="edit-submit" value="Save" class="form-submit" /></span></span> </div></form>