MELBOURNE,
\nRafa Nadal\u2019s Australian Open quarterfinal curse struck again on Tuesday, an injury forcing the top seed to retire in the fifth set against Croatia\u2019s Marin Cilic.<\/p>\n
A wincing Nadal struggled with a muscle strain in his upper right thigh from late in the fourth set before abandoning the match at 3-6 6-3 6-7(5) 6-2 2-0, leaving a packed Rod Laver Arena crushed with disappointment.<\/p>\n
It was only the second time the world No. 1 has retired in over 250 Grand Slam matches, his last, coincidentally, during the 2010 quarterfinals against Andy Murray. \u201cIt\u2019s not the first time here,\u201d an ashen-faced Nadal said. \u201cI am a positive person… but today is an opportunity lost to be in a semifinals of a Grand Slam.\u201d<\/p>\n
Of the seven Grand Slam quarterfinal defeats of his career, five have now come on the blue hardcourts at Melbourne Park. The 16-time Grand Slam champion said he felt the strain in the third set but was not affected until the fourth when it twinged during a scramble for a drop-shot. He signed off his news conference on a sour note, complaining that too many players were getting injuries.<\/p>\n
\u201cSomebody who is running the tour should think a little bit about what\u2019s going on,\u201d said the Spaniard.<\/p>\n
Majestic performance
\nIt overshadowed a majestic performance from sixth seed Cilic who reached his second Australian Open semifinal eight years after losing to Murray at the 2010 tournament. Bashing forehands as if felling trees with an axe, the 2014 US Open champion struck a mind-boggling 83 winners to set up a clash with 49th-ranked Briton Kyle Edmund.<\/p>\n
Unseeded Edmund bludgeoned his way to a shock 6-4 3-6 6-3 6-4 victory over third seed Grigor Dimitrov. The South Africa-born 23-year-old, playing in his first Grand Slam quarterfinal, showed no nerves as he blazed away with his fearsome forehand to subdue a jaded-looking Dimitrov. There were nerves as Edmund served for victory but he held firm to become only the sixth British player to make a Major semifinal in the Open era.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
MELBOURNE, Rafa Nadal\u2019s Australian Open quarterfinal curse struck again on Tuesday, an injury forcing the top seed to retire in the fifth set against Croatia\u2019s Marin Cilic. A wincing Nadal struggled with a muscle strain in his upper right thigh from late in the fourth set before abandoning the match at 3-6 6-3 6-7(5) 6-2 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":19707,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[122],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19706","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19706","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19706"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19706\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19708,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19706\/revisions\/19708"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19707"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19706"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19706"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19706"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}