Nadal struggles to beat qualifier

Nadal struggled with his forehand against Lorenzi Rafael Nadal struggled past 148th-ranked qualifier Paolo Lorenzi 6-7 (5), 6-4, 6-0 in his opening match at the Italian Open yesterday, looking far from the form that has

helped him dominate on clay for six years.
It marked the third consecutive match in which Nadal dropped the first set, having also rallied to beat Roger Federer in the Madrid Open semi-finals and then losing in straight sets to Novak Djokovic in Sunday\'s final. Nadal has never lost consecutive matches on his favourite surface.

Djokovic stretched his unbeaten start this year to 33 matches with a 6-0, 6-3 win over Polish qualifier Lukasz Kubot earlier. The Serb has a chance to take the top ranking from Nadal if he wins this tournament and Nadal fails to reach the semi-finals.
The event at the Foro Italico is a key warm up for the French Open, which starts in 11 days.
Nadal struggled with his forehand against Lorenzi, consistently sending routine shots from the centre into the net during the opening two sets. In all, Nadal committed 35 unforced errors to Lorenzi\'s 34.
Lorenzi used serve-and-volley strategy at the start, then varied his game more as Nadal began making uncharacteristic errors to conclude long baseline rallies.

Big point

Lorenzi beat Madrid semi-finalist Thomas Bellucci in the first round and has never won back-to-back matches at a Masters Series event. The crowd was clearly behind the Siena resident, chanting \"Paolo, Paolo\" after every big point he won.
After trading breaks midway through the first set, Lorenzi won three consecutive points to take the tiebreaker, which ended when Nadal missed an overhead smash way wide.
In the second set, Nadal wasted an early break before Lorenzi netted a backhand to hand Nadal a 5-4 lead, after which the Spaniard served out the set and never looked back.
Nadal\'s match came in sharp contrast to the dominating performance of Djokovic, whose unbeaten streak trails only John McEnroe\'s 42-0 start in 1984 in the Open era.

From: Gulf News