WORLD No.1 Rafael Nadal will play for his seventh title of the year at the Shanghai Masters.
Nadal has improved his winning streak to 16 matches after beating fourth-seeded Marin Cilic of Croatia 7-5 7-6 (7-3) in Saturday’s semi-final. Top-seeded Nadal, winning a tour-best sixth title of the season at last week’s China Open, has beaten Cilic in five of their six matches.
The Spaniard hadn’t lost his serve in 32 games but Cilic broke him twice – in the sixth and 10th games of the second set.
At 30-40 in the sixth game, Nadal netted a forehand volley to surrender his serve for the first time, and responded by twice angrily banging his racket on his leg, just above the knee.
Nadal failed to take advantage of his first match point when he made a forehand error at 40-30 in the 10th game, and went on to have his serve broken. Leading 6-3 in the second-set tie-breaker, Nadal prevailed on his second match point when Cilic netted a service return.
Nadal, a Shanghai finalist in 2009, will play the winner of the semi-final between second-seeded Roger Federer and Juan Martin del Potro. The Shanghai Masters wants to expand to a 10 or 11- day event, increase its draw size from 64 to 96 and raise prize money to more than $ US10 million ($ A13 million), starting in 2019.
The ATP board is expected to discuss Shanghai’s request next month.
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