By Chris Oddo | Tuesday August 9, 2016
Andy Murry and Rafael Nadal have been on divergent paths of late, but both are moving on at the Olympics in Rio.
Photo Source: Cameron Spencer/Getty
Andy Murray’s red-hot run continued at full throttle on Tuesday at the Olympic Games in Rio, while Rafael Nadal’s resurgence remained on track.
More: All the Olympic Tennis News and Results in the Olympic Live Blog
The last two Olympic Men’s Singles Gold medalists marched into the round of 16, though the pair of champions are coming from very different places at the moment.
Murray, the defending Olympic champion, rolled to his 14th consecutive victory with a comprehensive shellacking of Argentina’s Juan Monaco. Murray hit 14 winners against just 10 unforced errors to set up a round of 16 encounter with Italy’s Fabio Fognini.
The Scotsman has not lost since the Roland Garros final and he has won 25 of his last 26 matches dating back to his first match at the Internazionali BNL d’Italia in Rome.
Nadal’s fortunes have been far different from Murray’s of late. The Spaniard shocked the world when he pulled out of Roland Garros before his third-round contest with Marcel Granollers. After a 72-day hiatus, Nadal has returned in good form at Rio and has elected to add doubles and mixed doubles to his workload.
"You never know if it's the last Olympics for me, hopefully not,” Nadal said after his 6-3, 6-3 victory over Andreas Seppi on Tuesday. “But it's a possibility..."
The 30-year-old missed the 2012 Games in London, and appears to be committed to sucking up all the wonder and joy of the Olympic experience this year in Rio. He’ll compete in the men’s doubles quarterfinals later this evening with Marc Lopez (the pair will face Oliver Marach and Alexander Peya of Austria), and he has also entered the mixed doubles draw with Garbiñe Muguruza. The pair will play Lucie Hradecka and Radek Stepanek in the first round.
On Tuesday Nadal played a very solid tilt against Seppi, and he showed no signs of fatigue or injury. He saved both break points he faced and broke three times on eight opportunities, and was never really challenged by Seppi.
The Spaniard will next square off with Gilles Simon of France, who was a 7-6(3), 6-2 winner over Japan’s Yuichi Sugita.