NEW YORK – When Marin Cilic and Kei Nishikori meet in Arthur Ashe Stadium Monday with the U.S. Open title at stake, it will be a far, far cry from their first ever meeting in New York, back in 2010.
It was the second round. And if you thought this U.S. Open was steamy, that day could well have been two buckets higher on the humidity chart.
To see the two players handle all the heat over the last two weeks was a revelation because four years ago, they really suffered.
Here are a few exclusive pics from that match.
Nishikori ended up winning it, 5-7, 7-6 (6), 3-6, 7-6 (3), 6-1, and it was a true battle of attrition.
The match time was 299 minutes - one minute short of five hours. That was a LOT longer even four years ago than it has been in recent years and, as you can see by the photos, the ice towel had not yet come into fashion.
The two had 23 double-faults between them, and Cilic actually won one more point than Nishikori did in the match despite dropping the fifth set 6-1.
Nishikori, then just 20, looked like death when he trudged off the court. He was ranked No. 147 back then (Cilic was ranked No. 13 and the seeded player), had gone through the qualifying and gotten an injury retirement from Evgeny Korolev after less than two sets in his first-round match.
But unlike the way he rose from the ashes on several occasions during this year's event, he couldn't recover for his third-round match two days later.
Nishikori gave it a go; he took the court against clay-court specialist Albert Montañes of Spain but at 2-6, 1-2, having won a total of one point on Montañes's first serve, he called it a day.
Four years later, Nishikori has been the ironman of this year's U.S. Open and later this evening, possibly, its champion.
from Yahoo Sports http://ift.tt/1BnubTo
Aucun commentaire:
Enregistrer un commentaire