Rafael Nadal battled hard to avoid an upset in his opening match at the 2015 Swiss Indoors Basel. Nadal beat Lukas Rosol 1-6 7-5 7-6(4) for the third straight time in their careers to advance to the next round of the ATP World Tour Masters 500 event.

The Spanish tennis star came as close to losing by two points against Rosol in the match, which lasted two hours and 16 minutes on Monday. Nadal fell to his Czech opponent in the first set, then a double fault from Rosol in the second set forced the match to reach a decider. Nadal then began to face up to the Czech’s challenge. In the end, the 14-time grand slam champion went on to win the final set on a tiebreak to move on to the second round of the tournament.

Nadal struck four aces to Rosol’s eight. He won 69 percent of his first serve points and saved eight of the 12 break points that he faced. Nadal registered 23 winners and 27 unforced errors in the match.

The former World No. 1 admitted that it was a “tough match.” However, he was happy to survive and move on to round 2, where he will play the winner of the match between Bulgaria’s Grigor Dimitrov and Ukraine’s Sergiy Stakhovsky at Centre Court on Wednesday.

“It’s important for me to have these kinds of comebacks,” Nadal said in a report by ATPWorldTour.com. “I’ve been in these situations more times than I would like this year, so I’m happy to win a match like this.”

2015 Swiss Indoors Basel Completed First Round Matches Results

Men’s Singles

Adrian Mannarino def. Viktor Troicki 4-6 7-5 7-6(3)

Donald Young def. Henri Laaksonen 6-3 3-6 6-4

Rafael Nadal def. Lukas Rosol 1-6 7-5 7-6(4)

Dominic Thiem def. Robin Haase 0-6 7-6(5) 7-5

Men’s Doubles

Juan Sebastian Cabal/Robert Farah def. Adrien Bossel/Marco Chiudinelli 6-3 6-4

Alexander Peya/Bruno Soares def. Rohan Bopanna/Florin Merges 4-6 6-1 10-8

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