Nadal Crushes Kyrgios For 75th Career Title, Win Streak At 12

Twelve years after winning his first Beijing title over Guillermo Coria in 2005, Rafael Nadal added a second on Sunday crushing Nick Kyrgios 6-2, 6-1. It was Nadal 75th career title and a tour-best 6th of 2017.

And it upped his win streak to 12 following his US Open title last month.

“It is an important title for me,” said Nadal. “The last year that I had the trophy with me was in 2005… It is completely different. I don’t even remember that one. The feeling is probably better this year.

“First thing, the tournament is bigger than in 2005. It’s a 500 event. Before it was 250. Every title later in your career is more special than when you were younger. I had very tough draw here. When I saw the draw at the beginning of the tournament, I knew that it will be very, very difficult to have good chances here. But I was lucky the first day saving the two match points. After that, I think I played one of the best events of the year, playing very solid the whole week and playing against very tough opponents.”

Nadal opened the event saving a match point against Lucas Pouille. This was the fifth time in Nadal’s career that he has saved match points en route to tournament victory after 2014 Rio, 2010 Tokyo, 2009 Indian Wells and 2006 Rome.

After, Nadal called it one of his best wins of the year.

“I played, in my opinion, a great level of tennis tonight,” Nadal said. “Of course, I think one of the best matches of the year. He is always very tough opponent to play against. But today, I think my serve worked well, and I was returning a lot of balls, putting a lot of balls inside, then taking the advantage from the baseline a little bit more often than him. I was a little bit more aggressive and that was the key.”

Kyrgios was seeking a fourth career title.

“He played well. I played terrible. He’s in great form. He just destroyed me today, so it was too good,” said Kyrgios. “I put in a pretty good week, had some good wins. It’s tough to find positives when you won three games in the final. But I guess there were positives. In the semi-final I played well, obviously beating Alex.”