Brandon Nakashima beat top seed Francisco Cer\u00fandolo 3-1 in quarters (13-11, 10-18, 16-15, 12-11) on Thursday, the second match of UTS Rio presented by XP\u2019s opening night, closing out two single-point deciders on his UTS debut.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Nakashima took the first quarter 13-11 before Cer\u00fandolo hit back to dominate the second 18-10, his most comfortable spell of the match. Cer\u00fandolo, speaking in Spanish afterwards, put it plainly. <\/p>\n
That quarter I won it \u2013 the one I was leading, I won it easily,\u201d he said. \u201cBut then I lost the third and the fourth by one point. Those are very small details. I think this format gives you no margin for error \u2013 it\u2019s all very even, and it comes down to one or two decisive points. Today they went his way. He played a little better than me on those points. I fumbled an easy ball there, but well, these are things that happen in these new events.\u201d<\/p>\n
Nakashima closed the third quarter 16-15 and the fourth 12-11, both decided by a single point. \u201cI\u2019m not sure how I came back in that third quarter,\u201d Nakashima said. \u201cIt was incredible. I\u2019m not sure how I did it really, but I was happy with it.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a crazy match. The level was high. First experience for me, put right into it, and it was super fun. I really enjoyed it.\u201d<\/p>\n
I missed some easy shots at the end of the last quarter and in the third quarter also, but tennis like this.<\/p>\n
Cer\u00fandolo, the tournament\u2019s top seed, said the margins summed up the format. \u201cI think the quarters were super close, super, super tight,\u201d he said. \u201cI missed some easy shots at the end of the last quarter and in the third quarter also, but tennis like this \u2013 this format is like this, it\u2019s details, small details, and that\u2019s why I lost today and he won.\u201d<\/p>\n
Nakashima credited the format\u2019s momentum swings for his recovery. \u201cThe momentum shifts pretty quickly,\u201d he said. \u201cEven when you\u2019re up or down, after a few points you can get into a good rhythm and get some good points in a row. So yeah, super happy with it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Cer\u00fandolo\u2019s evening carried an added distraction. Argentina reached the World Cup final for a second consecutive tournament on Wednesday, and Cer\u00fandolo has booked a flight to New York to watch Sunday\u2019s game in the stadium. Asked whether football had been on his mind during the match, he said: \u201cMaybe a little bit, you know. But yesterday was a great day for all the Argentinians \u2013 making another World Cup final, it\u2019s amazing, two in a row. I was really happy, really excited yesterday, and I booked the flight for Saturday night so I\u2019m going to New York, and on Sunday I\u2019ll be watching Argentina live there in the stadium.\u201d<\/p>\n
Nakashima\u2019s win moves him on to face home favourite Guto Miguel on Friday. \u201cHe\u2019s a very talented young player, definitely comes with a lot of energy, especially with the Brazilian crowd and everything,\u201d Nakashima said. \u201cIt\u2019s gonna be exciting. I\u2019m looking forward to it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Nakashima\u2019s reward for Thursday\u2019s comeback is a teenager who spent the same night making Nick Kyrgios sweat in front of the same crowd.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Brandon Nakashima beat top seed Francisco Cer\u00fandolo 3-1 in quarters (13-11, 10-18, 16-15, 12-11) on Thursday, the second…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":805231,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[565],"tags":[64,63,85,747],"class_list":["post-805230","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-sports","tag-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/805230","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=805230"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/805230\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/805231"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=805230"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=805230"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=805230"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}