Nadal blames loss on serving woes saying 'My serve was a disaster'

Rafael Nadal did not have a very good day of tennis yesterday resulting in a loss to Rublev to end his Monte-Carlo campaign.

Not many people expected Rublev to be able to pull off an upset over Nadat at a venue where he was so dominant for so many years. Nadal did not play his best struggling with his serve in particular (7 double faults) which was a major reason for the loss. Nadal admitted as such after the game saying:

“For some reason, I had problems with my serve,” said Nadal. I don't understand why, because I was not having problems in the practices at all. But today, was one of those days that my serve was a disaster."

It proved Nadal's downfall as he won only 42 % of his 2nd serves, giving Rublev too many break points. When a player of the level of Rublev has multiple break points he will convert at least some of them.

Nadal went on explaining it completely impacted the rest of his game:

“Serving like this, the serve creates an impact on the rest of the game. When you serve with no confidence, you are just focusing on trying to serve, not thinking about how you want to [hit] the ball. You just think about what you have to do with the serve to put the ball in."

Nadal was dissapointed by the loss but also said he deserved to lose:

“When you face a great player like him and you don't play well, you should lose. That's easy to analyse. He played well and he deserved [it] more than me"

For Nadal attention turns to Barcelona where he is set to make an appearance. Like Monte-Carlo it is an event where he dominated over the years but he once again underlined his need to get better and practice:

“The only thing that I can do is go to Barcelona and keep practising, keep practising, try to fix the things that didn't work well. I think my backhand today was not [good] enough. Lots of mistakes. I was not able to open the court with my backhand then.”