Rafael Nadal opened his quest to reclaim the Rome title he’s won five times in the best possible style, evening things up with one of the few players to hold a winning head-to-head record against him by defeating Florian Mayer, 6-1 7-5.
In their only previous encounter, Mayer defeated Nadal in straight sets. But it’s one thing to beat Nadal during the autumn Asian hard-court swing, which usually throws up a few surprising results, and quite another to do so on his beloved red clay. Mayer, aged and ranked 28 and still struggling to get going in 2012 after a groin injury in January, took a thorough battering in the first set, holding serve just once. Nadal, on the other hand, rampaged through the set without losing a point behind his first serve, hitting 11 winners to just three unforced errors, and generally looking like a man determined to sweat out the poisons and lay the ghosts of his unfortunate defeat in Madrid the week before.
The first game of the second set suggested that things would continue the same way: at 15-0, Mayer hit a lob after bringing Nadal into net, only for Nadal to hit a delicate forehand lob of his own while running backwards. The winning get had Mayer applauding and Uncle Toni out of his seat. Mayer, whose ungainly movement and extravagant backswings can distract from his potentially lethal game, dug in to save a break point in that game and hold as Nadal’s level dropped slightly. Hitting fewer winners while his unforced error numbers climbed (he would end with 16 for the match, 13 of them committed in the second set), Nadal continued to hold with ease, but struggled to break through on Mayer’s serve. The German made some bigger serves, throwing caution to the wind and every shot he could come up with into the rallies. It worked for a while, but at 5-5 Nadal appeared to settle himself seriously to the task of breaking serve, and did just that with a forehand winner after a wild backhand error from Mayer.
Serving for the match, a double fault and a bizarre failure to put the ball over the net after chasing down a drop-shot—with plenty of time—might have had some fans suffering flashbacks to Nadal’s collapse against Fernando Verdasco in Madrid. In the next point, Mayer once again threw everything into it, but Nadal stayed patient, picking up the ball off the slice brilliantly and ending it with a forehand volley. Two big serves took him to match point, and as Mayer put a backhand into the net, Nadal moved on to face compatriot Marcel Granollers in the next round. It’s a new week, new courts and Nadal is back to winning ways.