{"id":2519,"date":"2014-06-05T11:13:10","date_gmt":"2014-06-05T04:13:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/?p=2519"},"modified":"2014-06-05T11:13:10","modified_gmt":"2014-06-05T04:13:10","slug":"rafael-nadal-beat-ferrer-in-four-to-reach-semifinals-french-open","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/tennis\/rafael-nadal-beat-ferrer-in-four-to-reach-semifinals-french-open\/","title":{"rendered":"Rafael Nadal beat Ferrer in four to reach semifinals – French Open"},"content":{"rendered":"

Paris – Briefly, and only briefly, Rafael Nadal was in a difficult spot in the French Open quarterfinals. For the first time in this year’s tournament, the eight-time champion dropped a set.<\/p>\n

And this had to be on Nadal’s mind: His opponent, David Ferrer, could present real problems. Not only is Ferrer ranked No. 5, and not only was he the runner-up at Roland Garros a year ago – to Nadal, of course – but he also beat Nadal on red clay the last time they played each other.<\/p>\n

So how did Nadal handle this test? Perfectly. From late in the second set, he won 10 games in a row, and 13 of 14 the rest of the way, to come back and beat Ferrer 4-6, 6-4, 6-0, 6-1, setting up a semifinal Friday against Wimbledon champion Andy Murray.<\/p>\n

”At the beginning,” Nadal acknowledged, ”David was playing with a higher intensity than me.”<\/p>\n

But once Nadal made a key adjustment – deciding to dispense with his surprisingly off-target backhand as much as possible and instead do whatever he could to use his topspin-heavy forehand – he took over…<\/p>\n

Read More<\/a><\/p>\n

South Africa Today Sport – Sport News Tennis<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Paris – Briefly, and only briefly, Rafael Nadal was in a difficult spot in the French Open quarterfinals. For the first time in this year’s tournament, the eight-time champion dropped a set. And this had to be on Nadal’s mind: His opponent, David Ferrer, could present real problems. Not only is Ferrer ranked No. 5, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":58746,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[248],"tags":[532,249,531,30,530,261,114,120,80,188,337],"class_list":["post-2519","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-david-ferrer","tag-french-open","tag-french-open-quarterfinals","tag-news","tag-rafael-nadal","tag-roland-garros","tag-south-africa-today","tag-south-africa-today-sport","tag-sport","tag-sport-news","tag-tennis-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2519","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2519"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2519\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2519"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2519"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2519"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}