Rafael Nadal racked up the 400th clay court victory of his career on Saturday as he swept past Belgium’s David Goffin 6-4, 6-0 to reach the Barcelona final and stand just one win from an 11th title in the Spanish city.
World number one Nadal also extended his winning streak on clay to 44 consecutive sets as he downed Goffin for a third time in three meetings on the red dirt surface he has dominated for more than a decade.
In Sunday’s final, the 31-year-old Spaniard, fresh from an 11th Monte Carlo title last weekend, will face Greek teenager Stefanos Tsitsipas.
“Very happy,” Nadal, who will be chasing his 77th overall career title, told atpworldtour.com.
“I played I think my best match of the tournament so far, no doubt about that. It was a great first set in my opinion. Both of us played at a very high level.”
Nadal slipped a break down at 0-2 to fourth seed Goffin in the first set on Saturday but that was the only blip on his afternoon.
Goffin saved two match points in the sixth game of the second set but a weary forehand went long on the third and Nadal celebrated with fists punched to the sky.
Nadal’s 400 wins on clay is the fourth best of all time with Guillermo Vilas of Argentina a long way ahead with 659 while Spain’s Manuel Orantes won 502 and Austria’s Thomas Muster racked up 422.
However, Nadal has lost just 35 times on clay in his career, easily giving him the best winning return of 91.9%.
Since his first tour-level clay-court victory over Karel Kucera of Slovakia at the 2003 Monte Carlo Masters, Nadal has also collected 54 clay court trophies.
Ten of those have come at Roland Garros, providing the bulk of his 16 Grand Slam titles.
No comments:
Post a Comment