Rafael Nadal kept getting pushed to the brink of defeat. He kept resisting. He dropped the first two sets, then won the next two. He erased two match points in the riveting fifth set's 10th game, then another two in its 20th game. Only when his fourth-round match against 16th-seeded Gilles Muller of luxembourg stretched past 4½ hours, the sunlight fading, did Nadal blink.
After repeatedly digging himself out of difficult situations, Nadal finally succumbed, broken in the last game of a 6-3, 6-4, 3-6, 4-6, 15-13 loss to Muller on Monday. "I played with the right determination, right passion, right attitude," Nadal said. "To win the match."
But he could not pull through, extending his drought without a quarterfinal berth at the All England Club to six years. "Just tried to hang in there," Muller said. "Still kept believing. Yeah, somehow in the end, I made it."
Nadal won two of his 15 Grand Slam championships at Wimbledon, and played in the final three other times, most recently in 2011. But since then, Nadal's exits at the All England Club have come in the first round (2013), second round (2012, 2015) or fourth round (2014, 2017).
All of those losses, except Monday's, came against men ranked 100th or worse. The 34-year-old Muller is not exactly a giant-killer: He had lost 22 consecutive matches against players in the top five. And he'd only reached a Grand Slam quarterfinal once before, at the 2008 US Open.
Now Muller, who also beat Nadal at Wimbledon in 2005, will get a much-needed chance to recover before facing 2014 US Open champion Marin Cilic in Wednesday's quarterfinals.
djoker advances
Novak Djokovic played the first match of this year's Wimbledon tournament under a closed roof on Centre Court, and he won it in straight sets.
The three-time champion at the All England Club beat Adrian Mannarino 6-2, 7-6 (5), 6-4 in a fourth-round match that was postponed from Monday.
During the third set, with Djokovic already up a break, the second-seeded Serb asked for a medical timeout and a trainer examined and stretched his right shoulder. Djokovic appeared to grimace in pain a couple of times as his shoulder was being checked.
Djokovic will face 2010 Wimbledon finalist Tomas Berdych, a man he has beaten 25 times in 27 matches, on Wednesday in the quarterfinals.
Venus in s/f
Venus Williams has reached the semifinals at Wimbledon for the 10th time. The five-time champion at the All England Club advanced to the last four for the second year in a row by beating Jelena Ostapenko 6-3, 7-5 under a closed roof on Centre Court.
Williams, who is 37 years old, made her Wimbledon debut a few months before Ostapenko was born. She last won the title in 2008, but reached the semifinals last year and the Australian Open final this year.
Elsewhere, Johanna Konta advanced to the semifinals for the first time by beating Simona Halep 6-7 (2), 7-6 (5), 6-4.
Halep would have taken over from Angelique Kerber as the top-ranked player if she had won.
Instead, Karolina Pliskova will be No 1 player. Pliskova lost in the second round, and Kerber lost in the fourth round.
Konta will face American Venus Williams.
Garbine Muguruza also entered the last-4.
The runner-up at the All England Club in 2015 beat Svetlana Kuznetsova 6-3, 6-4 on No 1 Court.