Rafael Nadal beat Mardy Fish 7-5, 6-1 to reach the Rakuta Japan Tennis Open Championship’s Final. The defending champion broke the American in the 11th game of the first set before serving out for it. The second set went much more smoothly for the Spaniard as he managed to break twice and held his serve throughout the set. This victory improves Nadal’s head-to-head record against Fish to 7-1.
He can become the second player to defend his title since Pete Sampras did it in 1994. He will now face the winner between Britain’s Murray and Spaniard Ferrer.
To see all our predictions for upcoming matches, based on our machine learning model analysing results since 1960, see our tennis predictions page here.
