{"id":218264,"date":"2025-06-27T09:35:09","date_gmt":"2025-06-27T09:35:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/218264\/"},"modified":"2025-06-27T09:35:09","modified_gmt":"2025-06-27T09:35:09","slug":"i-defeated-rafael-nadal-three-times-he-wasnt-even-that-good-tennis-sport","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/218264\/","title":{"rendered":"‘I defeated Rafael Nadal three times – he wasn’t even that good’ | Tennis | Sport"},"content":{"rendered":"

Rafael Nadal<\/a> left a lasting impression on virtually every player he came up against. The Spaniard won 22 Grand Slam titles before calling it a day last year<\/a>, leaving him behind only Novak Djokovic<\/a> in the men’s all-time charts.<\/p>\n

Nick Kyrgios<\/a> certainly can’t match his haul of achievements. But the Aussie admits to being underwhelmed when he first went toe-to-toe with Nadal at Wimbledon<\/a> in 2014. Kyrgios recently gave tennis fans an insight into his preparation for big matches and his thought process on the court during a live recording of the podcast Good Trouble<\/a>. And reflecting on his first meeting with Nadal 11 years ago threw up an interesting revelation.<\/p>\n

He admitted to being told by his coach before taking to the court: “You’re probably not going to win today.” But once they settled into the swing of the showdown, the underdog realised “this guy is not even that good”.<\/p>\n

Kyrgios had only just turned 19 at the time, and he dispatched Nadal in four sets to advance to the Wimbledon<\/a> quarter-finals and secure one of the most memorable wins of his career. Despite being underwhelmed by the Spaniard during that particular meeting, Nadal did eventually get the better of Kyrgios.<\/p>\n

Of their nine competitive meetings, Nadal won six of them. Kyrgios won three outright before booking his spot in the 2022 Wimbledon<\/a> final at Nadal’s expense as the veteran was not fit to play their semi.<\/p>\n

Sign up here<\/a> to receive all the latest tennis and Wimbledon<\/a> news straight to your inbox<\/strong><\/p>\n

Last year, Kyrgios revealed that part of the reason he played some of his best tennis against Nadal was because of genuine ill feeling towards him<\/a> and his approach to the professional game.<\/p>\n

“I couldn\u2019t stand him,” he told the Nothing Major<\/a> podcast. “I used to hate and despise him so much when I saw him walking around. He was one guy who always motivated me.<\/p>\n

“If I played him I would get up for it and try and get the best tennis I could possibly play. I didn\u2019t feel that anger towards Roger [Federer] or Novak [Djokovic] when I played them.<\/p>\n

“If I played Rafa, because everyone in our academies back home idolised him, they were like ‘he is such a hard worker, he\u2019s this and that’. I was like ‘I can\u2019t stand this guy’. I wanted to show people you could just have fun and be chilled and beat people like that.”<\/p>\n

For all the latest tennis and Wimbledon<\/a> news you can join our WhatsApp community<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Rafael Nadal left a lasting impression on virtually every player he came up against. The Spaniard won 22…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":218265,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4105],"tags":[86387,86388,15171,4296,79,1068,5838,16,15,5068],"class_list":{"0":"post-218264","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-kyrgios","9":"tag-nadal","10":"tag-nick-kyrgios","11":"tag-rafael-nadal","12":"tag-sports","13":"tag-tennis","14":"tag-tennis-news","15":"tag-uk","16":"tag-united-kingdom","17":"tag-wimbledon"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114754651805216410","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218264","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=218264"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218264\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/218265"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=218264"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=218264"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=218264"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}