It was the appointment that all tennis fans were waiting for since the Roland Garros draw was made: Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic will meet for the 59th time in their careers, with the prize of a place in the semifinals for the winner of this new episode of a historic rivalry.
If Djokovic achieved the classification by fast track, defeating the Argentine Diego Schwartzman (N.16) 6-1, 6-3 and 6-3 in just two hours and a quarter of a match, but it cost Nadal much more against the Canadian Felix-Auger Aliassime (N.9), 3-6, 6-3, 6-2, 3-6 and 6-3, in almost four and a half hours of a generational duel between the young Canadian promise (21 years ) and the best tennis player in history on clay.
“I didn’t start the match well. In the first set I didn’t manage to convert all the opportunities I created. In the third set I played better, but the beginning of the fourth was difficult. He has a great serve (194 km/h on average with the first serve) and I couldn’t return it”, declared the Spaniard after the game.
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“But at the end of the match I knew I had to do something different by being more aggressive and getting more into the net. That made the difference,” added Nadal, who added his 109th victory in 112 matches played in Paris.
Djokovic, with much less problems than Nadal
The problems that Nadal had to overcome Auger-Aliassime contrast with the ease with which Djokovic defeated Schwartzman, one of the toughest tennis players on the circuit and one of the toughest rivals on the ground.
Precise in the serve (73% of points won with the first service), devastating to the return (more than half of the points won), Djokovic played a very solid match against Schwartzman, to whom he only conceded seven games in two and a quarter hours in a match in which the ‘Peque’ ended up being condemned for the 45 unforced errors he made.
“He went from minor to major, finding his tennis more and more, making few mistakes and every time he had the opportunity to dominate he was very fine (…) He played very well when I gave him chances in the ‘score’ and I didn’t I was with the spark to get out of those moments”, admitted the Argentinian.
The balance between Djokovic and Nadal is favorable to the Serbian (30-28), although in Paris the Spaniard clearly dominates (7-2). However, the Serbian defeated the Spaniard in the semifinals last year, an edition that he would later win against Stefanos Tsitsipas (the other was in 2015).
Nadal admitted that “along with 2015, it is the occasion in which he is the most favorite due to the evolution that we have had one and the other in recent months”, in which the Spaniard barely played after suffering a crack in the ribs in Indian Wells and then the foot problem in Rome just over two weeks ago.
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Due to this “chronic and incurable” injury (as Nadal defined the Müller-Weiss syndrome that he has suffered in his left foot since the beginning of his career and that causes episodes of great pain) and his almost 36 years (he will be Friday), the Spaniard sees the end of his career getting closer.
However, he was surprised at the press conference when he acknowledged that “it could be my last match at Roland Garros” and it should not be ruled out that Nadal has already started playing that match, putting pressure on the organization to schedule the day match, when track conditions are more favorable for the thirteen-time winner in Paris.
“I prefer to play during the day. I know Roland Garros during the day, that’s how I’ve played it all my career and being aware that, hopefully not like that, if everything goes wrong it could be my last game here, so I’d like to play it during the day “, he insisted.
Carlos Alcaraz’s complaint about schedules
If they schedule the match between Nadal and Djokovic during the day, it would mean that the match between Spanish young prodigy Carlos Alcaraz (No.19) and German Alexander Zverev (No.3) would be scheduled in the night session.
“Honestly, it wouldn’t seem fair to me. I’ve already played the night shift twice,” Alcaraz declared in a press conference after sweeping the Russian Karen Khachanov (N.25) off the court in three sets (6-1, 6-4 and 6-3). “It doesn’t bother me to play at night, but everything ends very late: dinner, physio, trying to rest with the adrenaline you’ve got from the game… it’s harder to recover,” he explained.
Also in three sets, but much closer, Zverev won, 7-6 (11/13), 7-5, 6-3, against the Spanish Bernabé Zapata, the only one of the eighth-finalists who came from the previous phase and who did not It is among the Top 100.
This is how the women’s quarterfinals will be played
In the women’s draw, the first quarterfinal duels were also defined: the first will face the young Canadian Leylah Fernandez (N.18), finalist in the last US Open, and the Italian Martina Trevisan (N.59), who will play a quarterfinal for the second time in his career (the first was in 2020).
The other match will face two Americans: the veteran Sloane Stephens, finalist at Roland Garros in 2018 and winner of Wimbledon in 2017) and the young Coco Gauff (N.23), already a quarterfinalist in Paris last year when she was 17 years old!
SPORTS
with AFP
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