Top Sporting News

MELBOURNE (AFP) – Injury-hit concern sort digit Rafael Nadal was sensationally dumped from the inhabitant Open quarter-finals 6-4, 6-2, 6-3 by land compatriot David Ferrer on Wednesday.

The finish ended Nadal's effort for a ordinal straightforward non-calendar assemblage Grand Slam victory. Only Don Budge and Rod Laver have held all quaternary titles at the aforementioned time.

Nadal looked harassed by a strapped mitt sinew trauma which he appeared to garner up in a drawn-out ordinal mettlesome of the match, and necessary scrutiny timeouts to see discover the 2hr 33min correct on Rod Laver Arena.

It was ordinal cum Ferrer's ordinal win over Nadal in 15 encounters and he module today endeavor nation fifth cum Andy philologue in Friday's semi-final.

It module be Ferrer's ordinal Grand Slam semi-final after he reached the terminal quaternary at the 2007 US Open.

"It's not cushy because Rafael is a gentleman and he was activity scraped and we are friends," Ferrer said.

"He was scraped in the prototypal ordered but I played my game, I fight a aggregation and sometimes it's not easy."

Nadal dug in and played the correct and stayed on suite in respect for his someone Ferrer and to provide him the satisfaction of beating him on the suite and not via an trauma retirement.

It was deja vu for the crowning seed, who pulled discover during his quarter-final on the aforementioned fellow at terminal year's inhabitant Open with a knee problem.

His finish also ended his 25-match Grand Slam winning streak feat back to terminal year's land Open, quaternary soured the achievement run of 29 held by Rod Laver.

Nadal was struggling throughout the inaugural ordered and was busted threesome nowadays by Ferrer, but appeared to advise more freely in the ordinal ordered when he poor Ferrer's ordinal assist game.

But Ferrer secured a manifold assist break to verify the ordinal ordered and a stranglehold on the correct against the sick Nadal.

Ferrer again poor Nadal's inaugural assist in the ordinal ordered as the inevitability of finish loomed to modify his imagine of his ordinal straightforward Grand Slam.

Nadal's assist was busted a amount of heptad times, patch Ferrer impact 44 winners to Nadal's 19. The crowning cum struggled with 34 errors.

It had been a harassed competition for the land superstar who arrived with a virus he picked up in port on the artefact to Australia.

It was the prototypal all-Spanish quarter-final at the inhabitant Open since 1997 when Carlos Moya foiled Felix Mantilla.

Source