On his 36th birthday, the Spaniard won by retirement and advanced to yet another Roland Garros final, where he’ll look to become the tournament’s oldest champion.
PARIS — The soundtrack at tennis as a rich one—grunts and blocks and squeaks and smacks—but you seldom hear a scream. Sadly, that was what pierced through the air at about six o’clock this evening in Paris at the 2022 French Open.
Late in the second set of the men’s semifinal between Alexander Zverev and Rafael Nadal, the 25-year-old German slid for a ball, lost his footing and turned his right ankle. He was in instant agony and was carried off the court in a wheelchair, and sadly was not fit to play another point. Nadal, in turn, reached the final of the French Open yet again, this time on his 36th birthday. On Sunday, he will now play for his 14th title at Roland Garros, and if successful, will capture his 22nd Grand Slam, putting him two ahead of Novak Djokovic in the GOAT race.
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Relieved as he must be to survive this semifinal round, this is not how Nadal wanted to advance. As he left the court, he wore a look of shock. For the previous three hours, we did not witness peak Nadal. The Spaniard was lucky to win the first set, fending off four set points in a tiebreaker. In the second set, he was broken four times—the most he’s even been broken in a set at the French Open—and was lucky to stay alive. After turning in a generally brilliant performance against top-seeded Djokovic in the quarterfinals, Nadal seemed tight and apprehensive today, happy to let Zverev dictate play, sometimes winning the points by inducing an error, but not playing his usual authoritative clay-court style of tennis.
It’s ironic that Nadal was the one whose tournament had been shrouded in doubt over concerns of an injured foot. Nadal did not play his best tennis today by any stretch, but it did not seem to be on account of injury. On Friday, Nadal and Zverev had already played more than three hours and hadn’t completed two sets. This was heading for a five-hour match, so the fact that Nadal was able to get on and off the court in barely three hours ought to benefit him Sunday.
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When the shock of the injured opponent and the disappointment of winning by retirement wears off, Nadal ought to be considerably happier. He’s into yet another final and will play an opponent who has never been in this position—either Casper Ruud, the 23-year-old eighth-seed from Norway who trains in the Nadal academy and whose game Nadal knows well, or Marin Čilić, the Croatian veteran who Nadal owns a 7–2 head-to-head record against and has never been to the French Open final.
After a lot of drama, it was a regrettable way to end the first men’s semifinal. One must be concerned for Zverev, who played a wonderful tournament, and it remains to be seen whether he’ll be in any shape to play Wimbledon, which starts in just three weeks.
But the other headline is this: Nadal is three sets away from yet another march into greatness.
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