New York<\/p>\n
Juan Martin del Potro set up a US Open final clash against Novak Djokovic on Friday after defending champion and world number one Rafael Nadal quit his last-four clash against the giant Argentine with a knee injury.<\/p>\n
Third seed Del Potro, the champion in 2009, was 7-6 (7\/3), 6-2 ahead when Nadal retired.<\/p>\n
Del Potro will now face Djokovic, the 2011 and 2015 winner, who reached his eighth final at the tournament and 23rd of his Grand Slam career with a 6-3, 6-4, 6-2 stroll past Japan\u2019s Kei Nishikori.<\/p>\n
Djokovic boasts a 14-4 lead over Del Potro in a 10-year rivalry, including two wins without dropping a set at the US Open in 2007 and 2012.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have never met in a Grand Slam final. I have tremendous respect for him as a person and a player. He\u2019s a great guy,\u201d said Djokovic who missed the 2017 tournament through injury.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s had lots of injury problems in the past but he\u2019s a big-match player.\u201d Nadal was devastated by having to pull out although he believes he hasn\u2019t suffered any long term damage.<\/p>\n
\u201cI hate to retire,\u201d said Nadal, a player plagued by a series of knee injuries throughout his career.<\/p>\n
He also retired trailing in the fifth set of his Australian Open quarter-final against Marin Cilic in January.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not a tennis match when one is playing and the other is at the side of the court.\u201d Nadal, bidding for a fourth title in New York and 18th major, had spent the best part of 16 hours getting to the semi-finals.<\/p>\n
That included almost five hours to defeat Dominic Thiem in an epic quarter-final which stretched into the early hours of Wednesday morning.<\/p>\n
The effort took its toll, with the Spaniard twice needing to have his right knee bandaged before calling it a day after the conclusion of the second set.<\/p>\n
\u201cWell of course it\u2019s not the best way to win a match. I love to play against Rafa because he\u2019s the biggest fighter in this sport and I don\u2019t like to see him suffering,\u201d said 29-year-old Del Potro who will be playing in his second Slam final.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
New York Juan Martin del Potro set up a US Open final clash against Novak Djokovic on Friday after defending champion and world number one Rafael Nadal quit his last-four clash against the giant Argentine with a knee injury. Third seed Del Potro, the champion in 2009, was 7-6 (7\/3), 6-2 ahead when Nadal retired. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":41588,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[122],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-41587","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\/41587","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=41587"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41587\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41589,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41587\/revisions\/41589"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/41588"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41587"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41587"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41587"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}