Taylor Fritz

Rafael Nadal kept his Grand Slam dream alive with a Wimbledon quarterfinal win over Taylor Fritz on Wednesday. He advances to play Nick Kyrgios.

He is looking to become the first man since 1969 to complete a calendar Grand Slam, winning all four major championships in the same year. “For a lot of moments I was thinking maybe I might not be able to finish the match,” Nadal said afterward. In fact, his father was urging him from the player’s box to call it a day.

Nadal moves on to the semifinals where he'll face Nick Kyrgios.

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. 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.

Rafael Nadal prevailed over the American Taylor Fritz in a fluctuating five-set quarter-final at Wimbledon to set up a semi-final against Nick Kyrgios.

Having squandered a break point that would have set him up, Nadal served to stay in the championships after nearly three hours of fretful struggle at 4-5, sealing it with his fourth ace of the match. But he threw it in the bin on his own serve, Fritz held and Nadal matched him, landing them up in the 10-point tie-break after 4hr 8min. Nadal broke early in the fourth set and held to lead 4-2, but overcooked a forehand to hand back the advantage at 4-4. Those ambitions took a hit in the eighth game, when a double fault put him 3-5 down, and Fritz punished him with two more aces to take the set. He is a win against Nick Kyrgios away from the final – possibly for a 60th time against Novak Djokovic – and the chance to win his third grand slam title on the spin. Taylor Fritz, 6ft 5in of towering American self-belief, did his best to bury a wounded legend here on Wednesday, but the 36-year-old Rafael Nadal would not stay down – against the advice of his worried father – and prevailed over five fluctuating sets to reach his eighth Wimbledon semi-final.