After bringing down the curtain on long-time friend David Ferrer’s career in Round 1, defending champion Rafael Nadal returns under the lights on Wednesday for his second-round clash with Canadian Vasek Pospisil. For Spaniards Nadal and Ferrer, their final FedEx ATP Head2Head record shows Nadal with a 25-6 edge, however the last installment in their series did not end the way either player had wanted.
A calf injury halted Ferrer’s run with the score at 6-3, 3-4 in Nadal’s favour. Against Pospisil, Nadal will bid to follow up his lone prior FedEx ATP Head2Head victory over the 28-year-old from the 2015 China Open.
No.1 in the ATP Rankings, Nadal has won five tour-level titles this season. He holds the highest winning percentage on the ATP World Tour for 2018 with a 40-3 record heading into this clash.
The Spaniard downed #NextGenATP Greek Stefanos Tsitsipas earlier this month to claim a fourth Rogers Cup title in Toronto, his 33rd ATP World Tour Masters 1000 trophy, while Pospisil carried momentum from a semi-final run in an ATP Challenger Tour event in Vancouver to see off Lukas Lacko in the opening round.
Delpo Dominant In ’18 US Open Debut
Former World No.1 Andy Murray continues his comeback from hip surgery on Wednesday when he meets former World No.7 Fernando Verdasco in a blockbuster second-round showdown. Murray underwent hip surgery in January and won his first Grand Slam match since Wimbledon 2017 with a first-round victory over Aussie James Duckworth.
He enters his second-round match boasting a 13-1 FedEx ATP Head2Head record with No.32 seed Verdasco. They last met in the Dubai Duty Free Tennis Championships final in 2017, with Verdasco’s lone victory coming en route to the Australian Open semi-finals in 2009.
“They are quite different players, really,” Murray said of his first two opponents at this year’s US Open. “Verdasco doesn’t use as much variety… Obviously, Fernando has an extremely heavy forehand, plays with a lot of spin. On the serve, kind of difficult sometimes to know what he’s going to do.
“Fernando is a great shot-maker and someone that when he’s on his game, really tough to beat. Yeah, when he’s dictating, as well, you can’t allow him to dictate too much.”
At a career-high No.3 in the ATP Rankings, 2009 champion Juan Martin del Potro had the honour of playing the first night match on the new Louis Armstrong Stadium on Monday and quickly set about dampening the home hopes with a straight-sets routing of qualifier Donald Young. The Argentine meets another American, Denis Kudla, in the second round, a player he beat in his first match at the 2016 Delray Beach Open, his first tournament after nearly two years out with a serious left wrist injury.
In a nod to the future, this month’s Rogers Cup runner-up, No.15 seed Tsitsipas, will square off against Russia’s Daniil Medvedev in the second round on Wednesday. The #NextGenATP Greek saw off four Top 10 opponents in Toronto before he fell to Nadal in the final, while 22-year-old Medvedev is running hot after clinching his second ATP World Tour title on Sunday over Steve Johnson in the Winston-Salem Open final. The Russian won the pair’s only prior clash in Miami this year.
Swiss former World No.3 Stan Wawrinka’s comeback will continue when he meets French qualifier Ugo Humbert for the first time on Wednesday. The 2016 US Open champion backed up his opening-round victory over Grigor Dimitrov at Wimbledon, defeating the Bulgarian at the same stage in New York to reach the second round. Humbert, a #NextGenATP Frenchman, saw off US wild card Collin Altamirano in the first round.
Other Matches To Watch:
[5] Kevin Anderson vs. Jeremy Chardy
[9] Dominic Thiem vs. Steve Johnson
[11] John Isner vs. Nicolas Jarry
[28] Denis Shapovalov vs. Andreas Seppi
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