RAFAEL NADAL showed why he is No1 male tennis player in the world as he came from behind at the ATP Finals – but he is sweating on his spot in the semi-finals.
The Spaniard beat Stefanos Tsitsipas 6-7 6-4 7-5 at the O2 Arena in his final match of Group Andre Agassi.
It was yet another brilliant demonstration of why he will finish as the world’s leading player of 2019 ahead of Novak Djokovic.
After the match, the French and US Open champion received his end-year trophy from the ATP but any opportunity to celebrate was put on hold for a few hours.
That is because he will have to wait until 10pm tonight before knowing if he has a dream semi-final clash with Roger Federer on Saturday afternoon.
Nadal, 33, needs the eliminated Russian Daniil Medvedev to beat German Alexander Zverev in the final match at 8pm otherwise he will be out of the group stage for the third time in his career and first time since 2011.
It is a crazy situation that he could win this match and be recognised as the main man on the tour and yet he could be packing his bags this evening and travelling back to Spain for the Davis Cup in Madrid.
This was high-quality, high-octane stuff and there was little to choose between two the stars in a tight opening set.
It went to a tie-breaker after no break point opportunities across the 12 games but world No6 Tsitsipas had the greater hunger and guile to prevail.
The 21-year-old sealed the first set after 58 minutes with a blistering 134mph ace, his fifth of the first set.
Persistent Nadal had four breaks points in the fifth, seventh and nine games and finally wore down the Tsitsipas serve to take the match into a deciding set.
In the third set, Nadal gained the break of serve in the 11th game and he managed to serve out the victory after two hours and 52 minutes to avoid the tension of a final-set tie-breaker.
