Nadal Struggles, Federer Rolls in Qatar at BetLM

DOHA, Qatar – Rafael Nadal strug­gled past Philipp Kohlschreiber while
defend­ing Qatar Open cham­pion Roger Fed­erer routed Niko­lay Davy­denko in their
sea­son open­ers on Tuesday.

The second-ranked Nadal over­came Kohlschreiber of Ger­many 6–3, 6–7 (2), 6–3
in a match that lasted 2 1/2 hours. Fed­erer, who lost badly to Nadal and No.
1-ranked Novak Djokovic over the week­end at an exhi­bi­tion tour­na­ment in Abu
Dhabi, showed he had shaken off the rust by over­whelm­ing the injury-plagued
Davy­denko 6–2, 6–2 in just 54 minutes.

Also, No. 6 Jo-Wilfried Tsonga beat Tunisian wild card Malek Jaziri 7–6 (5),
6–7 (5), 6–1 and fourth-ranked Gael Mon­fils defeated Rui Machado of Por­tu­gal
7–5, 6–3.

Nadal, who has strug­gled with a sore left shoul­der since the end of last
sea­son, started well and looked headed for a rou­tine vic­tory. But the
43rd-ranked Kohlschreiber stepped up his net play in the sec­ond set and jumped
to a 4–1 lead on his way to evening the match. Kohlschreiber went up a break in
the third but Nadal broke back and took con­trol from there.

Nadal ripped a cross-court fore­hand past Kohlschreiber to go up 2–1 and then
broke for 3–1. Helped by an improv­ing serve and able to win most of the big
ral­lies, Nadal jumped to 5–2 and closed the match with an acro­batic over­head
smash and then a vicious cross-court fore­hand that Kohlschreiber couldn’t reach.

“In gen­eral, for me, (this) was a really pos­i­tive match,” Nadal said. “I
think I played a very good first set. The only moment that I didn’t play well
was the begin­ning of the sec­ond and after the tiebreak. For the rest, I think I
played a very solid match.”

Nadal admit­ted Kohlschreiber was a tough open­ing draw, since he often plays
much bet­ter than his rank­ing would indi­cate. Nadal, though, has never lost to
Kohlschreiber in eight meetings.

In a rematch of last year’s Qatar Open final, Fed­erer expected a tricky
encounter with Davy­denko. But it was clear from the start that Davy­denko– a
for­mer world No. 3 who has fallen in the rank­ings to 41st– would be no match
for the third-ranked Swiss.

Fed­erer jumped to early leads in both sets. He had his ser­vice game work­ing
and repeat­edly pounced on Davydenko’s weak serves.

Hop­ing for a fourth title in Doha, Fed­erer was able to move the Russ­ian
around the court at will as he racked up 18 win­ners to Davydenko’s seven.
Davy­denko also hurt him­self with 20 unforced errors.

“It was a good first match for me into the new sea­son and I think it was a
com­bi­na­tion between me play­ing actu­ally really well and Niko­lay just not find­ing
his range, you know, what we’re used to see­ing from him in the past,” Fed­erer
said. “But I take these vic­to­ries any time, espe­cially against a top player
like him.”

Fed­erer said he was most happy he bounced back from his play in Abu Dhabi,
where he served errat­i­cally and strug­gled to break his opponents.

“I thought my fore­hand and back­hand was work­ing. I think I had good
vari­a­tion on my serve which wasn’t the case last week,” he said. “So I’m happy
I was able to pull myself together and make that hap­pen. So things have
obvi­ously changed here and I’m happy the con­di­tions suit me.”

Tsonga was chal­lenged almost from the start by Jaziri in their first
meet­ing. The 118th-ranked Tunisian kept Tsonga off bal­ance, mix­ing in vol­leys
and drop shots that had the third seed curs­ing to him­self. But Tsonga could rely
on his serve, which pro­duced 12 aces.

The match turned in Tsonga’s favor in the decid­ing set when the French­man
started going to the net more often.

“It was good for me to play a long time, to stay a long time on the
court,” Tsonga said. “But it was not easy, not easy today. Malek was in good
shape. With the wind, it was really dif­fi­cult to play my best tennis.”

- – —

Fol­low Michael Casey on Twit­ter at https://twitter.com/mcasey1