Nadal taken to fifth as rain descends
Nadal departed with the fifth set still delicately poised
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Monday, 02, Jul 2007 09:42
Number two seed Rafael Nadal will resume tomorrow in his third-round battle with Robin Soderling at 6-4 6-4 6-7 4-6 2-0 after a rain-affected day at Wimbledon.
The Spaniard looked up against it early on as the big-serving Swede penned him back with some huge aces, but when that weapon failed in the seventh game the French Open champion took immediate advantage.
That break proved enough for Nadal to see out a tight first set and when he repeated the trick in the first game of the second, it seemed an irresistible momentum was building against Soderling.
The 28th seed briefly dug in with a break back, but Nadal nosed back in front in the very next game.
Intermittent rain then kept the players off court for around two hours over lunch, but when they returned Nadal refused to let the set escape his grasp and served out to put himself 2-0 up.
A roller-coaster of a third set saw the pair exchange two breaks each before going into an equally dramatic tie-break.
Soderling climbed back from two mini-breaks down early on and went toe-to-toe with Nadal until finally waiting out another rain delay to produce a winner for a 9-7 win.
Nadal looked unsettled by the increasingly murky conditions and his uneasy relationship with the Wimbledon grass looked to have taken a turn for the worse as he faded in the fourth to send the match to a decider.
In the closing stages of the day's play however, Nadal engineered a break that could prove crucial as he hopes for a return of drier, brighter weather tomorrow.