It was touted as the Nadal vs Baby Nadal fixture, as arguably two of the best clay courters took the court in Madrid today.
The world wasn’t ready for the passing of the baton though, as never in the entire clay season did Rafa provide his opponents with even a glimmer of hope.
However, with Thiem you always knew that Nadal would be in for a fight, but it had to stop there, didn’t it? Surely Nadala couldn’t be beaten, but Thiem wasn’t taking the court as a mere participant. He desperately wanted the baton to be passed, and his stroke making ensured that it did.
While, you won’t want to jump to the conclusion that Thiem is probably the better player on clay at the moment, but you could genuinely say that he played the bigger moments better today.
He showed composure, presence of mind and intensity when it came to the crunch situations.
That fearless ball striking proved to be a little too much for Nadal in the end as he succumbed to a straight sets loss to Thiem(7-5, 6-3).
Twitter had mixed emotions after Thiem’s win, some mourning Nadal’s loss while others venerating Thiem as the clay courter who could dominate the coming few years.
Check out the tweets:
Nadal’s loss means that Federer will return to the top of the rankings on Monday, but will lose it if Nadal wins the title in Rome.
