With the fans from his home country behind him, Rafael Nadal continued to make a successful return from injuries by reaching the quarterfinals of the Mutua Madrid Open with a 6-2, 6-7 (5), 6-3 victory over Pedro Cachin.
A five-time winner of the event in his native Spain, Nadal is playing in just his third event of 2024 and reached the fourth round of any event for the first time since 2022.
Nadal, 37, delivered on nine of his 18 break-point chances and fired 35 winners to reach the Madrid quarterfinals for a 10th time.
“I am enjoying (things, but) let’s see how I wake up tomorrow,” Nadal said after the three-hour, four-minute match. “I don’t know. Day by day, I am enjoying playing at home; it means everything to me.
“I am trying my best to keep dreaming. Tomorrow is another day to keep dreaming. To keep playing in front of this amazing crowd and to me that means everything.”
Nadal broke Cachin’s serve three times in the first five games in the opening set, closing it out against the Argentina native 6-1 on a service break.
Cachin answered by breaking Nadal in the opening game of the second set and then breaking again to lead 4-1. Nadal rallied back with three service breaks to force a tiebreaker, but Cachin took a 4-1 lead in the tiebreak and closed out the set to even the match.
Nadal lost his serve once in the final set but broke Cachin’s serve twice over the final five games to finish off the victory.
“In the third set, even with some mistakes, I was able to be a little more unpredictable and that probably changed the match,” Nadal said.
Nadal is set to square off in the quarterfinals against Jiri Lehecka of the Czech Republic, who was a 6-4, 7-6 (7) winner over Thiago Monteiro of Brazil. Lehecka, 22, fired 10 aces and won 77 percent of his first service points to win in the third round.
Nadal has never faced Lehecka.
In other third-round matches, Russia’s Daniil Medvedev, the No. 3 seed, rallied for a 5-7, 7-6 (4), 6-3 victory over No. 25 seed Sebastian Korda. No. 5 Casper Ruud of Norway rolled to a 6-2, 6-4 victory over No. 29 Cameron Norrie of Great Britain.
No. 17 Alexander Bublik of Kazakhstan also came from behind for a 3-6, 7-6 (2), 6-4 victory over No. 14 Ben Shelton, while Canada’s Felix Auger-Aliassime advanced when Jakub Mensik of the Czech Republic retired after trailing 6-1, 1-0.
In the day’s two late matches, top-seeded Jannik Sinner of Italy sailed to a 6-2, 7-5 win over Russian Pavel Kotov, and Russian 16th seed Karen Khachanov topped Italy’s Flavio Cobolli 7-5, 6-4.
–Field Level Media
