MELBOURNE, Australia — His knees, back, wrist and appendix have all failed Rafael Nadal recently. On Wednesday, his stomach joined the list of ailments, but he gutted out a five-set victory, 6-2, 3-6, 6-7 (2), 6-3, 7-5, to reach the third round of the Australian Open.
Nadal seemed fine in the first set, racing to a 4-1 lead over Tim Smyczek, a journeyman from Milwaukee who has never beaten a top player. But then he showed signs of sickness, bending at the waist and seeming to vomit on the court. His serve lost its zip, his groundstrokes their pop and his movements their blur.
“I felt very tired,” Nadal, who is seeded third, said. “I don’t know, at end of the first set, I start to feel my body very bad. I was sweating like crazy.”
Smyczek broke Nadal’s serve in the eighth game of the second set, then saved a break point on his own serve before winning the set. As he headed for his seat, Smyczek gave a disbelieving look to friends in the crowd. Winning that set against one of history’s greatest players was by far the best result he had ever experienced.
The next set went to a tiebreaker, which Smyczek won with an ace — one of 15 in the match.
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“I was timing the ball well on the return and serving well from the beginning of the match, and it helped a lot because obviously the crowd were behind him,” Murray said later.
He said the warm conditions allowed him to hit a lot of high bouncing balls that Matosevic had trouble handling.
“So when the temperature’s like this, I quite like it,” he said.
No. 10 Grigor Dimitrov also dropped a set, but advanced. He will meet Marcos Baghdatis, a former finalist here, who defeated No. 20 seed David Goffin of Belgium, 6-1, 6-4, 4-6, 6-0.
An earlier version of this article misspelled the surname of an Australian in the men’s draw. He is Marinko Matosevic, not Malosevic.
