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0 In October 2020, with the pandemic having prompted the French Tennis Federation to move the tournament to early fall from late spring, Nadal stampeded through the competition without dropping a set. He embarrassed Djokovic, 6-0, 6-2, 7-5, in the final.
Nine months later, though, Djokovic got revenge, breaking Nadal’s spirit and his body during an epic four-set semifinal on his way to the championship. Mueller-Weiss Syndrome, the degenerative foot condition that Nadal has had since childhood, prevented him from playing for most of the rest of the year. For months during the fall, Nadal wondered whether he would ever play again.
Then the pain became manageable. And after just a few weeks of preparation and a single tournament, Nadal won the Australian Open in January, showing the world once more that counting him out is a terrible idea. But in recent days, the pain has been difficult again, and the top players can sense that the 2022 French Open has a different feel than others in recent memory.
“A lot of competition on the men’s side,” said Stefanos Tsitsipas of Greece, who lost the final to Djokovic last year after winning the first two sets. “It’s something that we haven’t seen for sure in a long time.”
Tsitsipas, 23, spoke of the “slightly younger and very hungry” players like himself, who are desperate to begin winning Grand Slams, and of Carlos Alcaraz, the rising and dangerous 19-year-old from Spain. “He seems like he plays tennis just because he enjoys the sport,” Tsitsipas said of the young Spaniard. But he prefaced those comments with a reference to Nadal, someone he jokingly described as having won the French Open “at least 28 times.” That is how large his presence looms on these grounds.
Nadal tried to downplay his prowess at Roland Garros on Friday.
He has collected dozens of championships on red clay throughout Europe, winning a dozen in Barcelona, 10 in Rome and 11 in Monte Carlo, so 13 at Roland Garros makes sense, sort of, he suggested. (No, it doesn’t. It’s ridiculous.)
Also, he said that the results from the last two months mattered more than titles won a long time ago. The rib injury made it difficult for him to sleep, much less swing a racket, especially with the violent torque that he generates on even his routine shots. Others, he said, have played so much more, and better.
