In a press conference in Madrid Rafael Nadal was asked who according to him between Frances Tiafoe and Alexander Zverev has most chances to triumph at the biggest level. "I don't know", replied the world no. 2. "Out of all these young players, the one that has won more titles is Zverev. That is the reality. And what can they do? Well, I don't know. Today's player is one of those candidates to be really good in the future. Shapovalov is also a good player. We have Tsitsipas. We have a group of players that I cannot predict the future, you know. The best player will be the one who is able to improve the most during the next months and years. And we will be able to see that as spectators and hopefully me as an opponent."
On his performance on serve, Nadal added: "It is true when I played against Thiem I didn't have a good serve. I committed a few double-faults. I think that the match against Thiem, as I said before, it was my best match on clay. I think that with my serve it was not my best day. I served pretty badly that day. We cannot say I lost due to the serve. You know, we cannot say that my serve is due to my defeat or whatever. You know, I also committed other errors and the serve seemed worse. When they break me, in my case only, it's not only because of the serve, it is because I'm doing other things wrong. And if you are asking mow how important is the serve in every break, I would say it's not more than 25 percent of importance, that's my feeling. From the baseline, I play in a comfortable way. If I'm playing with security, calmly, the serve automatically just improves point after point. And, for example, at the beginning of this season, I changed the serve. I think that on fast courts and hard courts I was playing really well. In Australia, I served really well. And I served well on tour. The serve was playing very good. And here on clay, it's a completely different story. I have to try to adapt that serve to the surface because it's a little bit different. I have to tweak things and have to find solutions and I think today I found it. I think I played with a lot of confidence. I have been very comfortable and I'm able to play the next round."
from Tennis World USA http://bit.ly/2V6kbgp
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