Rafael Nadal rises above the wind, defeats Fernando Verdasco

Reporting from New York — 

In the second game of the match, Fernando Verdasco tossed the tennis ball in the air for his serve and had to do a full turn to find it.

In the third game, Rafael Nadal smacked a forehand that seemed headed for a sizzling trip to the opposite baseline until it smacked into a wall of wind and sat up in the middle of the court, waiting to be walloped back by Verdasco.

It was wacky tennis played again on the Arthur Ashe Stadium court at the U.S. Open on Thursday night. Players needed to lick their fingers, hold them toward the sky and try to figure out which way the wind was blowing. North, south, east, west or all directions at once.

But it was the top-seeded Nadal who wrangled the conditions to fit his game. The 24-year-old advanced to the U.S. Open men’s semifinals for the third straight time with his 7-5, 6-3, 6-4 win over eighth-seeded fellow Spanish left-hander Verdasco.

Nadal, who has won eight major championships but never the U.S. Open, will play 12th-seeded Russian Mikhail Youzhny in one Saturday semifinal. Second-seeded Roger Federer will meet third-seeded Novak Djokovic in the other.

Youzhny made it to Saturday with a four-hour, 3-6, 7-6 (7), 3-6, 6-3, 6-3 win over 25th-seeded Stanislas Wawrinka of Switzerland.

The constantly breezy conditions have left almost all of the players over the last week shaking their heads and having not much idea how they won or lost.

“I think I did well, I did very well for the moment,” Nadal said. “I started very scared, when I was playing with the wind and against the wind too.”

And indeed, for the first time in this tournament, after 62 service games, it seemed Nadal was finally going to succumb to the weather by having his serve broken.

In the third game, Verdasco outhit the wind, bashed two forehand passing shots past the befuddled Nadal and grabbed a 2-1 lead that became 3-1 when Nadal couldn’t convert on two break points of his own.

Nadal slapped himself on the thigh a couple of times, shook his head and became more methodical and less risk-taking through the rest of the match. He never faced another break point.

In the eighth game of the first set Nadal evened the match at 4-4 as Verdasco double-faulted twice. When Nadal broke Verdasco a second time to win the hourlong first set, it was clear that Nadal had calmed his game while Verdasco grew more frustrated.

By the end of the two-hour, 22-minute match, Verdasco was reduced to getting a warning from the chair umpire for smashing his racket to the ground, a response to Nadal’s running forehand winner that sped up the line. Then to make it worse, Nadal hit a winner off a full twirl. It wasn’t just to be mean, Nadal said. It was the only way he could get to a ball that was wiggling in the wind.

“It was an instinct shot,” Nadal said. “I thought it was another chance to put the ball in the court.”

In 2006 Youzhny made it to the semifinals here by upsetting Nadal in the quarterfinals. He couldn’t do the same to Federer in the semifinals.

Youzhny, 28, has never gone to that place again in a major and he didn’t sound certain he could beat Nadal again. “It’s another time,” he said. “I’m another player. I cannot say I am a better player now. But it’s another time … so everything can happen.”

It is not a secret to Youzhny that there is building anticipation for a Nadal-Federer final, and the Russian was asked if he was willing to be the bad person and ruin that anticipation.

“I’m ready to be the bad person,” Youzhny said. “I love to be a bad person in this case.”

diane.pucin@latimes.com

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