Olympic Tennis Record: Andy Murray First to Win Two Singles Golds

Del Potro will face Britain’s defending Olympic champion Andy Murray in the final on Sunday. Despite his current low 147 ranking, the 27-year old Argentinian has proven earlier in his career that he is an elite-level talent whenever he’s healthy. Nadal will take on Argentina’s Juan Martin del Potro, who advanced with a 7-5 7-6 (4) win over Spain’s Roberto Bautista Agut, drawing enthusiastic chants from rafters packed with blue-and-white clad fans from neighbouring Argentina.

It’s been hard to assess the form and fitness of Del Potro this week, with the Argentine having not played a tough tournament like this one for a long, long time and who knows how much he’ll have left for Sunday.

The fourth set was a match in itself, with Murray three times coming from a break down after Del Potro had gone from the verge of total exhaustion to looking like he might force a decider.

Murray won four successive games as his opponent exhausted to win the third set 6-2. They closed it out on the next point.

“He’s the favorite for sure”, del Potro said. She failed to convert two set points in the first.

However, just because Murray has played for and won the Olympic gold medal before does not mean he is going to have an easy time of it. At the start of the second set, he feathered one that bounced twice before del Potro could get to it. Del Potro caught the ball, then stepped to the net, rested his elbows on the white tape and put his head on his balled-up fists. Nadal gains ground at 3-2 with a 40-0 win in the fifth game. Instead, he moved quickly and hit aggressively to establish a 4-2 lead.

Murray looked cloyed by tension in the previous two matches but in the fourth game started to really crack his groundstrokes off both flanks and force the speedy Japanese onto the back foot.

Nishikori pounced on the second break-point opportunity he saw to go up 3-2 in the first set. Del Potro did not give Nadal a chance during the match-tying second frame. Del Potro and Nadal exchange wins for nine consecutive games to tie the final frame 6-6. Deuce came and went, before a sensational 23 shot rally brought up match point.

As a result, Nishikori lost five straight games to drop the set.

That gave him his third match point, which he converted with a service victor.

Djokovic shockingly fell in the first round of the Rio Olympics – to Argentina’s Juan Martin del Potro.

Murray never found top gear against Johnson and knew he needed to play better to give himself a shot at gold. She will compete in the final for what may be her country’s first medal of the Games, and its first ever gold.

A recent tennis Rio 2016 game was a scare for defending champion Andy Murray after he nearly did not make the quarter finals in his game with world No. 40, Fabio Fognini of Italy. However, Del Potro was able to defeat Murray in their last meeting during the 2013 Indian Wells Masters quarterfinal.

Murray, who repeated his gold medal performance from 2012, also extended his career-high win streak to 18 matches. Mattek-Sands and Jack Sock are ranked world no. 110 and 23, respectively.

It stood up remarkably well but Murray prodded and probed and eventually broke him down, after four hours and two minutes of brutal, sometimes brilliant tennis. But the Spaniard earned a doubles gold and just missed a singles medal.

He also won a silver in the mixed doubles with Laura Robson in London, but was knocked out with Heather Watson at the quarter final stage in Rio.

He managed to save two match points but dumped the third into the net with a tired backhand and the contest was over in 80 minutes.