Rafael Nadal’s dream of adding the ATP Finals title to his vast collection of silverware was ended for another year as the Spaniard was beaten 3-6 7-6(4) 6-3 by Russian Daniil Medvedev in a sizzling semi-final on Saturday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
World number four Medvedev’s first career victory over the 20-times Grand Slam champion sent him through to a Sunday showdown against Dominic Thiem who earlier beat Novak Djokovic in another titanic clash.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The 24-year-old Medvedev reached the semi-finals as the only player to post a 100% record in his group, including a superb defeat of Djokovic.He was the better player in the opening set against Nadal but one lapse on serve was all the Spaniard required to snatch it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Medvedev blew a big lead in the second set when Nadal was one point away from going down 5-1, but Rafa swung the match his way and served for a place in the final at 5-4, only for Medvedev to break to love.A forehand winner helped Medvedev move 5-3 ahead in the tiebreaker and he took full advantage to set up a decider.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Nadal appeared to be feeling the pace in a tense final set and some sensational winners allowed Medvedev to grab the crucial break of serve in the seventh game.Two games later Nadal dumped a backhand in the net to hand Medvedev a landmark victory.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Rafael Nadal’s dream of adding the ATP Finals title to his vast collection of silverware was ended for another year as the Spaniard was beaten 3-6 7-6(4) 6-3 by Russian Daniil Medvedev in a sizzling semi-final on Saturday. World number four Medvedev’s first career victory over the 20-times Grand Slam champion sent him through to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":84350,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[122],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-84349","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\/84349","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=84349"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84349\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":84351,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84349\/revisions\/84351"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/84350"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=84349"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=84349"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=84349"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}