WIMBLEDON, England — On another of those notable occasions when Rafael Nadal seems to go nine-tenths into the crypt before emerging with replenished youth, the world’s utmost fighter spent Wednesday fighting through a meandering slog to fight again.
After four hours, 21 minutes and umpteen plot twists, Nadal nosed past the 24-year-old Californian Taylor Fritz in the closing super-tiebreaker to win 3-6, 7-5, 3-6, 7-5, 7-6 (10-4), to reach a loud semifinal coming Friday against the loud Australian Nick Kyrgios.
Nadal, who won the French Open last month on a painful foot he wasn’t sure could function, won this one through the kind of familiar match that wrings familiar mass speculation about his condition. It clearly sapped some caliber from his backhand and his serve, the latter often laced with uncharacteristic meekness. But he found his way through an opponent whose big year has brought him a world ranking of No. 14, if an opponent who was fantastic but not quite airtight enough.
Nadal’s groundstroke started getting plenty airtight toward the end, meanwhile, bringing the old familiar tableau of an opponent unable to get anything by him. Then, in the post-match interview, Nadal referred to “abdominal, something is not going well,” and said, “I had to find a way to serve completely differently.” And: “For a lot of moments I was thinking maybe I would not be able to finish the match, but I don’t know, the court, the energy …”
The crowd did implore him, in ways encouraging and disrespectful toward Fritz, to raise his Grand Slam match record in 2022 to 19-0, as the Australian Open and French Open champion retains the chance to become the first player since Novak Djokovic in 2016 to hold all four big singles trophies at once, and the first since Steffi Graf in 1988 to win all four in the same calendar year.
On a date 14 years after his renowned final with Roger Federer here, a date he said he never imagined seeing way back then at age 22, he played his first deciding 10-point super-tiebreaker, designated for fifth sets nowadays. He played it beautifully, snaring a quick 5-0 lead as all his experience kicked in against a player in his first Grand Slam quarterfinal. Fritz got to 5-3, but Nadal surged on, finally serving at 7:30 p.m. under the soft-blue sky in a match that began at 3:09.
When he ripped a forehand clean winner cross-court on the first groundstroke, he had played his Lazarus role yet again.