Nadal overcomes Murray mania yet again

The long wait for a British winner of the men’s single title at Wimbledon rolls on as Andy Murray lost out at the semi-final stage yet again. There is no shame in losing to Rafael Nadal, who celebrated his 20th consecutive win at Wimbledon but hopes were genuinely high that Murray was going to do it this time. Taking the first set gave added vigour and life to this belief but as so often with Andy Murray, all it takes is one thing to go wrong and then his confidence starts to dip.

Murray relies on confidence

It is not that Andy Murray is a bad player, he clearly isn’t, he is rightly ranked near the top of the seedings and world ranking for tennis players. It is just the fact that he is below the calibre of the player’s at the top of their game. When Murray was firing on all cylinders in the semi-final, he was looking great but there was the impression that Nadal was just waiting for Murray to make a mistake and then make his move. He did and it was probably the fact that he knew what was coming next which put Murray on the downwards slide for the rest of the match.

Nadal was just waiting to pounce

The first set was taken 5-7 by Murray but Nadal then powered through with a 6-2, 6-2, 6-4 run which put him into the final once again. The margin of set victories says a lot about the game, Murray being forced to work extremely hard to get anywhere but when Nadal broke Murray, he managed to come up with the performance that would break him time and time again. This is again an indicator in the gulf in class between the two at times because when Nadal gets on top form, he is close to being unstoppable.

One man who will be hoping to stop Nadal is Novak Djokovic, who will be the Spaniards opponent in the Grand Slam final. Djokovic overcame Jo Wilfried Tsonga in an epic encounter which lasted over three hours. The score line of 7-6 (7-4) 6-2 6-7 (9-11) 6-3 indicates the closeness between the two players but Djokovic was worthy of his win. It meant that the two finalists in the Queens Club tournament prior to Wimbledon fell at the semi-final stage this time around but it sets up a cracking final come Sunday afternoon.

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