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Tennis

Nadal sweeps past Djokovic to reach Madrid Open final

Rafael Nadal ended a seven match losing streak against Novak Djokovic on Saturday to move into the final of the Madrid Masters. The Spaniard beat the Serb 6-2 6-4 and will play either Dominic Thiem or Pablo Cuevas in Sunday’s final.

Rafael Nadal is seeking his fifth Madrid Open title.
Rafael Nadal is seeking his fifth Madrid Open title. Reuters/Sergio Perez
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"Rafa was obviously a better player." said Djokovic. "He deserved to win. He controlled the game from beginning to the end.

Nadal made the perfect start by breaking the Djokovic serve to love in the opening game. The 29-year-old only won four points in the opening four games as Nadal raced into a 4-0 lead.

Djokovic did salvage some pride by seeing off more pressure on his serve to at least hold twice and force Nadal to serve out to take the first set in 40 minutes.

"It wasn't a very high quality of tennis from my side. I made a lot of unforced errors," added Djokovic. "His quality was very high. He managed to do whatever he wanted really, especially in the first set."

Djokovic was playing his first tournament since parting company with his coaching team at the end of April. Djokovic said the move was intended as shock therapy in order to reconquer his heights of yore.

He was world number one for 122 consecutive weeks between July 2014 andΒ  November 2016 during which he completed his sweep of wins at the four Grand Slam venues in Melbourne, Paris, London and New York - the career Grand Slam.

He was the eighth man to have achieved the feat but since his victory at the French Open in Paris in June 2016, he has failed to win any of the subsequent Grand Slam tournaments and he has also dropped to number two in the world behind Andy Murray.Β 

The former world number one, Roger Federer, has hogged the limelight this season with wins at the Australian Open, the Indian Wells Masters as well as the Miami Masters.

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