Posted on by Willem

Friday/ Indian Wells tennis

The men’s semifinals of the Indian Wells Masters tomorrow will be very interesting.
Semifinal 1: 🇪🇸 vs. 🇪🇸
Semifinal 2: 🇺🇸 vs. [the country that shall not be named]

Specifically,
19* 🇪🇸 Carlos Alcaraz (age 18) vs. 4 🇪🇸 Rafael Nadal (age 35)
20  🇺🇸 Taylor Fritz (age 24)        vs. 7       Andrey Rublev (age 24)
*This is the seed number for the player for the tournament.
On paper, the player with the lower seed number is favored to win.

May the best man win as far as the Spaniards go, and go USA!
We don’t want a Russian to win. Not this year, anyway.

Sat 3/19: Fritz won 7-5, 6-4, and Nadal won 6-4, 4-6, 6-3.
Sun 3/20: Taylor Fritz beat Nadal 6-3, 7-6 (7-5), the first American to win there since 2001.

Here are Spaniards Carlos Alcaraz (far side) and Rafael Nadal (he with the killer bicep) practicing, at the Indian Wells stadium. There is actually not that much to be learned from a practice session. Match play is a different beast, and will make these two guys into ‘animals’ (it’s a compliment). They will hit the ball with all their might, stretch their legs for shots far and wide, and chase down dropshots with a dead bounce .. and do that for four hours if they have to. Amazing.
[Still picture from clip posted on YouTube video channel 12kgp on Mar 10, 2022]

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