Day and dusk
If the Argentinian had not come as a willing victim and seemed to believe that a real match could take place, the start of the match quickly proved him wrong. Broken from the start, Cachin was directly overwhelmed by the power of the Spanish champion who literally walked on his opponent in the first set, ultimately winning 6-1.
While the public undoubtedly expected Nadal to continue his momentum and unfold, they saw Cachin increase his level of play and directly take the Mallorcan’s serve to lead 2-0. If the king of the earth did not come far from returning directly to the match, Cachin then saved a break point to keep his lead in the score (3-1). The Argentinian even widened the gap a little further with a double break (4-1). But if there’s one thing Nadal knows how to do better than anyone, it’s fight. With his back to the wall, the Bull of Manacor resumed his march forward to erase a first break (4-3). Under pressure, Cachin then found himself forced to control his nerves to conclude the second round (5-4). A sign of the importance and tension of the moment, the Argentinian committed two double faults, including one on a break point even though he had not committed any before that. In addition, he wasted two set points. But as it was written that the second set would experience an improbable scenario, Nadal lost his serve again before snatching the tie-break thanks to a white break.
In the tie-break, Cachin took the lead again and even led 4-1 with two mini-breaks in advance before seeing his opponent equalize (4-4). On the ropes, the Argentinian finally did not tremble to pocket the tie-break 7-5 and take Nadal into an uncertain decisive set.
Answers to his questions
At the start of the last set, a big question arose: was Nadal going to hold on physically? In January, it was on this level that he fell against Jordan Thompson after experiencing a comparable scenario. But three months have passed since then. It was therefore almost impossible to know how he would handle the end of the match after more than two hours on the court.
And this third set continued on the momentum of the second with a rather improbable scenario. While Nadal broke from the start and offered himself two double break points, Cachin did not stop fighting to directly equalize (2-2). But the man with 22 Majors did not tremble in the face of this new comeback from his opponent and went straight forward by resuming his serve (4-2), before holding (5-3). On the Argentinian’s serve, he even put in a little more to finish the match and thus reach the round of 16 of the tournament (6-1, 6-7, 6-3).
If he recently questioned a future participation at Roland-Garros, Nadal will have reassured his fans with already three victories in this tournament, a first for him since the US Open 2022. And it might not stop there then that Jiří Lehečka (ATP 31), will face him in the next round, with a quarter-final up for grabs against Daniil Medvedev (ATP 4) or Alexander Bublik (ATP 18). His victory after a huge fight should also give Nadal a lot of confidence physically.
