MADRID, 6 One. (EUROPA PRESS) –
The Spanish tennis player Rafa Nadal has overcome his first game of the 2022 season against the Lithuanian Ricardas Berankis (6-2, 7-5) to advance to the quarterfinals of the Melbourne (Australia) tournament, ATP 250 category and preparatory for the Australian Open.
In Melbourne Park, where the oceanic ‘Grand Slam’ will be played in a few weeks, the Balearic Islands played his first official individual match since August 2021, after five months of recovery from his foot injury and after having overcome the coronavirus.
The man from Manacor, number six in the world ranking, solved the first set in just 30 minutes, without facing occasions of breaking with the service, and only lost four points with his serve in the opening set, in which he committed two unforced errors .
Already in the second set, he went ahead 5-2 and could not close the duel to the rest and neither with his next serve, but he did in the twelfth game, after one hour and 31 minutes of play. His next opponent will be the winner of the duel between the Australian Alexei Popyrin and the Dutch Tallon Griekspoor.
This same week, Nadal had returned to the official competition in the doubles modality of the oceanic tournament, where together with the also Balearic Jaume Munar he beat the Argentines Sebastián Báez and Tomás Martín Etcheverry (6-3, 3-6, 10-4) .
Precisely, Munar also guaranteed his place in the quarterfinals in the individual draw after beating Swiss Henri Laaksonen (6-1, 7-5) on Thursday. His next rival will come out of the duel between the American Reilly Opelka and the French Maxime Cressy.