Rafael Nadal and Taylor Fritz put on a show on Wednesday evening at Wimbledon, with the Spaniard prevailing in a five-set thriller to reach his eighth Wimbledon semi-final.

While the pair exchanged blows on Centre Court, a vocal crowd watched on in support, gasping in astonishment at the shotmaking that was on display at SW19. After the clash, ATPTour.com spoke to some of the lucky fans who had witnessed Nadal clinch another memorable victory on the lawns in London.

“I thought it was absolutely amazing,” said Andre Richards [below right], aged 63 from London. “When it started we thought it was going to be Taylor’s match. Then as it went on it was so even. Over the 35 years I have been coming, that was there with the Nadal and Roger Federer final that I went to in 2008. Nadal and Federer was probably the greatest match ever and that match tonight really rivals it. It was amazing.”

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Babs Smith from Lincolnshire, England, watched the match donned out in fancy dress. For her, the victory meant a lot.

“What a match. I was chuffed for Nadal. It was point for point. The atmosphere was crazy and enthralling throughout,” Babs [below left] said. “Anybody could have won and nobody deserves to lose but experience came through on the day. Nadal is a legend and we are so happy.”

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With fans attending The Championships from around the world, Nadal’s epic victory made the trip extra special for Trixie White from the Philippines and Harrison Bell from Texas, United States.

“I feel so fortunate to have been here today,” first-time visitor Trixie [below right] said. “It was my birthday gift from my partner [Gwyn, below left]. It was so intense, I couldn’t relax when watching. I was so nervous for Rafa. I couldn’t breathe at one point, I had to put my oils on. The energy in the crowd was amazing. It is my first time here and what a great match. I was just thinking, ‘I can’t believe I am watching Nadal!’. I have never been in a crowd like this and it was so amazing and electric.”

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“I was rooting for Nadal and I was so happy for the ending,” said 18-year-old Harrison [below]. “It was so close. I had my moments where I was questioning if he would come through, but he delivered. It was my first time watching him, I am a big fan.”

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While the crowds roared the players on, Sue Jones from Oxfordshire said that she watched on in amazement as she tried to comprehend what she was witnessing.

“I don’t know how they do it. I don’t know how they have got the stamina, the determination to get through those tight situations,” Sue said. “I thought Nadal would win it, but I didn’t know how because he was always coming from behind. He always finds a way and he used his experience to come through. It was a fabulous match.”

For Puneed Jed from India, Nadal’s victory made his week.

“Unbelievable! What more could you want. From the end of the third set, Nadal never let Fritz get away. It was an amazing match,” said the 34-year-old Puneed [below left]. “What else could you want than seeing Nadal in that form. After Australian Open, Roland Garros and now Wimbledon, I hope for a calendar Grand Slam. Loads of people were cheering for Rafa. He made everyone’s day and my week.”

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Top seeds Rajeev Ram and Joe Salisbury are through to the Wimbledon semi-finals for the second straight year following a dramatic, five-set victory Wednesday at The Championships. The American-British pairing outlasted 12th seeds Nicolas Mahut and Edouard Roger-Vasselin, 6-3, 6-7(1), 6-1, 3-6, 6-4.

Ram-Salisbury sealed victory with their fourth break of the match in its final game, confirming their progress to their seventh Grand Slam semi-final as a team, all since 2020. Champions at the 2020 Australian Open and the 2021 US Open, the pair is bidding for its first final at doubles World No. 1 Salisbury’s home major.

The top seeds created the bulk of the chances in the three-hour, 17-minute contest, finishing four-of-nine on break points while dropping serve just once on three break points against. But their French opponents dominated the second-set tie-break and capitalised on their lone break of the match in the fourth set to force a decider on No. 2 Court.

Late in the second set, Ram-Salisbury thought they earned a break of serve to move ahead 6-5, but a successful challenge saw the call overturned, giving the Frenchmen new life. While Mahut and Roger-Vasselin used that momentum to run away with the ensuing tie-break, Ram-Salisbury snapped back to take the first five games of the third set.

After surviving the five-set test, Ram-Salisbury will meet 14th seeds Matthew Ebden and Max Purcell in a rematch of this year’s Australian Open semi-finals. The Australians won that match 6-3, 7-6(9) before falling to countrymen Thanasi Kokkinakis and Nick Kyrgios in the final.

Ebden/Purcell— who won three five-setters to open their Wimbledon campaign — enjoyed straightforward progress in their Wednesday quarter-final.

They eased past seventh seeds John Peers and Filip Polasek 6-4, 6-4, 6-2 to reach their fifth tour-level final of the season. Ebden/Purcell converted on four of their nine break chances in the match while saving all six break points against them.

Both semi-finalists are seeking their second tour-level titles of the season. Ebden/Purcell were victorious in Houston, claiming their first ATP Tour title as a team in April, while Ram/Salisbury won the Rolex Monte-Carlo Masters later that same month. The top seeds have won six tour-level titles since teaming up in 2019.

For a little over an hour on Tuesday, Rafael Nadal practised on Court 16 at Wimbledon with his sights set on his next encounter; Wednesday’s quarter-final against Taylor Fritz. Accompanied by Francisco Roig and Marc Lopez, his two coaches, the 22-time Grand Slam champion was working hard to keep alive his chances of reclaiming a title he won in 2008 and 2010.

“It’s good,” Roig told ATPTour.com after the training session. “We managed to train a lot, there were a couple of days when we almost played for four hours. When we got here, the first thing was to be able to compete. He arrived here unsure about his foot treatment in Mallorca, even though it went well for him.

“The goal was to keep playing better every day. Now we’re in that situation. Given how last-minute it was, we can be happy after three years without playing on grass. So far, we’re doing well. When we arrived, we weren’t thinking about winning, but now he is among the favourites.”

To stay on track for a third Wimbledon crown, Nadal must next move past Fritz, with whom he shares a 1-1 ATP Head2Head record. In March, the American defeated the Spaniard in the final of the BNP Paribas Open in Indian Wells, a match in which Nadal played with a rib fracture that subsequently kept him out of action until the Mutua Madrid Open in early May.

“Taylor is a player that was very promising,” said Roig. “Today, his game has progressed a lot, he’s had his best results quite recently. Now he hits the ball quite well, and maybe before he struggled with mobility. Today he moves much better and that’s why his ranking has gone up. He’s very dangerous on grass, he hits the ball hard. We’ll have to have a great day.”

Roig, though, is satisfied with the progress Nadal has made in his last two matches, straight-sets victories against Lorenzo Sonego and Botic van de Zandschulp.

“I think he’s looked really good in the last two matches, although he struggled to close them out,” Roig said. “There was a big difference in the level of ball striking, in dominating, going forward. The more he goes to the net, the better he’ll hit the ball.

“Everything you do can always be done better, especially on grass. We’re working on things every day, facets that will increase his chances on court.

“You do things to improve. That is what we’re trying on our day off. We’re on grass and we need to improve things. We’re working on specific things that he may see in the match so that when he has to execute them, he is confident because he’s practised them.”

– This story was translated from ATPTour.com/es

Nikola Mektic and Mate Pavic’s red-hot form on the grass shows no sign of abating at Wimbledon.

The defending champions eased to a 6-4, 6-3, 6-3 quarter-final victory against 11th seeds Kevin Krawietz and Andreas Mies on Tuesday at the grass-court major. The win extended the all-Croatian team’s winning streak to 12 matches, following its title runs at The Queen’s Club and Eastbourne in the lead-up to The Championships.

Mektic and Pavic were dominant behind serve, facing no break points and winning 85 per cent (45/53) of points behind their first delivery to keep two-time Roland Garros champions Krawietz and Mies under constant pressure. The second seeds converted four of their six break points to register a one-hour, 39-minute win and improve their record as a team at Wimbledon to 10-0.

Their next opponents will be Juan Sebastian Cabal and Robert Farah. The Colombian duo advanced to their second semi-final at the All England Lawn Tennis Club after Denis Kudla and Jack Sock retired from the quarter-final clash with the Colombians leading 6-3, 6-3, 6-7(3).

The only previous time Cabal and Farah made the semi-finals at Wimbledon, in 2019, the Colombian duo lifted the trophy. The 19-time tour-level titlists are hunting their first tour-level crown of 2022 in London.

Taylor Fritz has enjoyed the best run at a major of his career at Wimbledon, where he is into the quarter-finals without losing a set. The 11th-seeded American will face a tough challenge in the last eight against second seed Rafael Nadal, who has won the first two majors of the season.

It will be a rematch of this year’s BNP Paribas Open final, in which Fritz defeated Nadal for his first ATP Masters 1000 title.

Before the match, ATPTour.com caught up with Fritz’s coach, Michael Russell, to speak about his charge’s run at SW19, his message for Fritz, why the 24-year-old needs to be aggressive against Nadal and more.

How fun has it been for you to see all the hard work coming out at another big event like this?
It’s great. You know how tennis is, there are so many ups and downs. Taylor had the injury during the clay-court season with Madrid and Rome and then a couple first-round, early exits in ‘s-Hertogenbosch and in Queen’s.

We put a really good week of training in before Eastbourne and then obviously had that unbelievable week in Eastbourne, not even losing serve and then continued to take that into Wimbledon. It’s fantastic. That’s the pinnacle of coaching. You put the hard work in and then you see the results.

Was that foot injury dating back to what he dealt with at Indian Wells or was it something totally different?
Something totally different, which is unique. Taylor is hypermobile, so sometimes he gets these awkward injuries that just creep up. But he’s got a great physio who tries to keep him as healthy as possible and just had to deal with a metatarsal injury in his foot.

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How has it been seeing the low of Taylor dealing with his injury during the clay-court season and now this high where he is now?
It’s the challenges of playing on Tour. You can’t expect to have title weeks every week. Obviously, you hope to. You try to put the player in the best possible situation with training and he’s got a great team around him with his physios and his consultant. We just try to make him ready to play as well as possible each match.

When it pays off, like it did in Eastbourne, earlier in the year in Indian Wells and now at Wimbledon, it just gives you a sense of joy. But at the same time, it gives Taylor that understanding of why he needs to put all that hard work in, because it does pay off, and that’s the result.

Early in the grass season, were there doubts he would be able to play Wimbledon?
There were a couple of doubts. We just weren’t sure if the foot was healed properly and then he had a little bit of a knee issue, but we realised that a lot of that was just not being fit enough after the foot injury, because he was in a boot for two weeks. And so he just wanted to play the French Open, but we didn’t think we had the proper training before that, and I think that affected the first couple weeks on the grass.

After we were able to finally get a really good training block in, we saw that he was going to be ready to play Eastbourne and obviously a fantastic run so far here at Wimbledon.

Obviously the Indian Wells final was a bit different between Taylor and Rafa. We know what Taylor went through with his foot and Rafa had his injury. Despite that, how much confidence is Taylor able to take knowing he beat Rafa in an ATP Masters 1000 final?
That’s a huge confidence booster, to have that win in his belt, in a final on such a big occasion. He needs to use that confidence and belief when he steps on court tomorrow.

After his last match Taylor said he wanted Rafa. When a lot of players face the likes of Rafa, Novak and Roger, there’s an element of an intimidation factor. How nice is it to coach someone who wants those moments?
Taylor is a very confident individual and that’s part of the reason why he has a lot of success. When he steps on court, he believes he can beat anybody. It’s great to have a player who’s that self-confident. You just have to back it up off the court and with all the practice sessions and when you take that self-confidence on the court, you can execute all your shots.

Is that something you think he was just born with?
Taylor’s always been very self-confident and then when the self-confidence wanes a little bit, either due to injury or he’s just not feeling it, then we just put the hard work in on the practice court, in the gym, off court. All those extra items and activities help to create more confidence

How different is it playing Rafa at a place like Indian Wells compared to the grass at Wimbledon?
It’s completely different conditions. You have a Grand Slam, you have a grass court, which is a different surface. You have three out of five sets and a different ball as well, there are a lot of variables. But with that being said, it’s still the same player. You have that confidence that you beat him in Indian Wells and you need to take that with you into the match and get ready for a battle.

Rafa is one of the fittest if not the fittest player on Tour and obviously he’s won the most Grand Slam titles of anybody, so he’s going to have a tonne of confidence. But at the same time, Taylor’s coming in with a tonne of confidence on the grass, winning Eastbourne and four straight matches here without losing a set. So I’m just looking forward to it. It’s going to be a good battle and of course I hope Taylor comes out on the other side as the winner.

What’s your message for Taylor going into such a big match?
He has to play aggressively. Taylor plays his best tennis when he’s serving big, playing aggressively and basically taking the racquet out of his opponent’s hand. He’s staying focussed and not getting caught up in playing passively and long rallies. That’s not his game.

Taylor’s spoken so often this year about how his forehand has improved. Why do you think that is? Is it just the mentality of going for it more?
Taylor is definitely feeling more confident in his forehand and he’s going for it more. He’s not worried about going big on the forehand and missing. I think that has a lot to do with why he’s been so successful and also we’ve been putting a lot of hard work in. He’s much fitter, which leads to better movement, better balance, better setups, better agility, and that goes a long way as well. I think it’s a combination of all those factors.

Taylor is always focussed on continuing on and it doesn’t seem like he’d be satisfied just being in the quarter-finals. How do you balance the excitement of this being a great run so far and still wanting to push forward?
It’s important that you keep the player not complacent and just keep striving for more. You make your first quarter-final, which is a great result in a Slam. But at the same time, there’s no reason why you can’t make your first semi-final. There’s no reason you can’t make your first final and so forth.

It’s just continuing to have Taylor believe in himself, and he does have a strong self-belief. It’s just not getting caught up in all the exterior noise that’s around him and just focus on the match at hand.