Is this the beginning of an end for Rafael Nadal?

It’s not easy to come back two days after and be the same, after nearly five hours against him, the way he pushes you, the way you have to give everything you have to try to beat them.

“Why do I watch?”

“It was something I’ve never experienced in a match, so it was very unfortunate”, Tomic said”.

However, Verdasco has denied any involvement in any match-fixing scandal when questioned about this. Overall Rafa has had an incredible career, yet his time as an elite may be over.

Verdasco looked headed for the exit when he trailed 0-2 early in the fifth set, only to reel off six straight games to snatch only his third victory in 17 encounters with Nadal.

Obviously it is tough, especially because is not like a year ago that I arrived here playing bad and feeling not ready for it. “This year was a completely different story”.

“It’s tough when you work so much and arrive at a very important event and you’re going out too early”.

Rafael Nadal is developing a worrisome Grand Slam habit: He keeps giving his opponents chances to bludgeon him, and they are more than happy to oblige.

Murray, like Roger Federer and Novak Djokovic, thought authorities could be doing more to combat the potential for corruption. But he has had knee issues and his career has been in decline.

It was the eighth time she’s lost in the first round of a Grand Slam tournament and the third time in Australia. The best sign for now is the one that points in the direction of clay, Nadal’s traditional haven. The 32-year-old had a set point when Nadal was serving a 5-4, but he could not capitalise and paid the price when Nadal broke back, forcing a tiebreaker. At Wimbledon, Nadal lost to a qualifier in the second round. At the Australian Open, he was knocked out by fellow countryman Fernando Verdasco in the first round in a thrilling battle lasting over four and a half hours.

“In terms of being competitive, I was competitive”.

The more familiar shock of falling seeds added to the ructions caused by allegations of tennis corruption as former champion Rafa Nadal and highly-fancied Simona Halep both departed in the first round of the Australian Open on Tuesday. “I think I was able to block out everything else once I was out there”, Hewitt said. He had a 6-5 lead in the fourth and was ahead 30-0 in the 12th game before Verdasco came roaring back to win in the tiebreaker. Verdasco hit 95 winners that night.

Britain’s Andy Murray is safely through to the second round along with Spain’s David Ferrer, Canada’s Milos Raonic and Frenchman Gael Monfils. “It will be great if I can play against her”, said the confident Spanish world number three. I’m still thinking about the Achilles injury … He started breaking my serve. “He (Verdasco) played better than me”. Big serve. Very aggressive. “He was not playing that well in the first set”, he said.

“I closed my eyes and everything went in”. “You can not be in the middle of being offensive or defensive, because it is obvious that finally you don’t have a consistent strategy, then you are lost”.

“How do you hit the ball that hard every time?”

Then, Nadal rebounded to win the U.S. Open a few weeks later, rolled into the following year by reaching the Australian Open final and went on to claim his ninth French Open title.

Mouratoglou believes that if Nadal can win another Grand Slam title, it will be at Roland Garros. “I was doing that good on the practices and the previous tournaments”.

The post-match statistics made interesting viewing, as Verdasco hit twice as many winners as Sela, but crucially he was forced into twice as many unforced errors by the hard-working Sela who covered the court superbly.