Rafael Nadal Advances by Beating Marcos Daniel in 2011 Australian Open

Rafa Nadal spent just 47 minutes on court in his opening match of the 2011 Australian Open, running up a 6-0, 5-0 lead over injured Brazilian Marcos Daniel who was forced to retire with knee tendinitis.

The No. 1 seed barely broke a sweat, romping comfortably to a first set win in just 19 minutes before Daniel took a medical timeout after the change of ends.

The knee injury was clearly not something that was going to fix itself, and an unrelenting Nadal battered Daniel into submission with a lethal display of ground strokes.

Daniel was barely able to move side-to-side. and you couldn't help but feeling sorry for him, especially after hearing him tell the trainer he “wanted to give the people two sets”.

Even that was too much to put on his knee, and, after losing an 11th consecutive game, he approached the net and offered his hand.

You can’t judge Nadal by this performance. Unlike Roger Federer and Novak Djokovic yesterday, Nadal was never tested to any degree.

For the sake of completeness, let’s run through the numbers, as academic as they are. Daniel won just four points in the first set, committing 11 unforced errors as Nadal strolled.

The second was much of the same. Nadal hit 15 winners and was only close to losing a game early in the set. However, Daniel blew four chances to break at 0-1.

While I feel sorry for Daniel, the fact that he knowingly started the match with an injury is worrying.

Daniel deprived a lucky loser the chance to compete in the main draw and he collected $20,000 for his “performance.” Maybe it’s the cynic in me, but I really don’t think he should have even stayed in the draw. I’m sure he worked hard to get to this point, but this retirement was bad for him, worthless for the fans, and bad for the tournament.

Nadal won’t really be worried about his lack of time on Rod Laver as he’ll just go to the practice court, but hopefully we’ll get a better idea of what form the world’s No. 1 is in when he makes the next step toward the Rafa Slam against either Ryan Sweeting or Daniel Gimeno-Traver.