Rafael Nadal showed in his opening round match against Denis Istomin just how good his defensive game is. Istomin hit 95 aggressive shots—shots that were winners, forced errors from Nadal or put Nadal under pressure. Nadal returned 68 of those 95 aggressive shots (72%). (As a comparison, Djokovic returned 51% of the aggressive shots he faced in his first round match.)
For the match, Nadal hit 77% of his returns back in play (second highest percentage among Day 1 players). But when he had a break point, Nadal hit 92% of his returns back in play (11 of 12) which lead to seven breaks of serve for Nadal.