‘Despite injury, Nadal is the No.1 player to beat at French Open; Alcaraz isn’t the favourite,’ says India tennis star

Rafael Nadal is taking it one match at a time at the Roland Garros this time around. Only a fortnight back, his foot injury, the Mueller Weiss syndrome, had resurfaced which resulted in his defeat to Denis Shapovalov in the Italian Open round of 16. The concern over his foot injury remained the cynosure in the build-up to the 2022 French Open, which resulted in many veterans and analysts ruling him out as the outright favourite for the competition. But Nadal put all the talks and concerns to rest with a dominating first-round win against Australia’s Jordan Thompson on Monday. And India tennis star Jeevan Nedunchezhiyan feels that despite the injury talks, Nadal remains the No.1 player to beat at Roland Garros this year.

For the Spaniard, it wasn’t just the foot injury that concerned many. A week before the loss in Rome, his return from a rib injury was cut short by Carlos Alcaraz in the Madrid Open quarters. Hence, for the first time in his career (excluding the Covid-hit 2020 season), Nadal headed to a French Open tournament without any clay-court titles that season. But normalcy resumed on Philippe Chatrier on Monday as Nadal claimed his record 106th win at Roland Garros, where the 35-year-old hit 27 winners as against Thompson’s 14 which clearly outlined his dominance at the baseline. He also won 75 per cent (12 out of 16) of the points.

“I think it is difficult to classify him as not the favourite after seeing yesterday’s performance, keeping in mind that he has won this title 13 times. So for Nadal, I am not all convinced that he would be even the second favourite at the French Open. But yes, it looked that he is not very hampered by his foot injury and if that is the case, he is the No.1 person to beat at this Grand Slam,” said Jeevan in response to a Hindustan Times query during a select media conference.

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Jeevan, won the had doubles title with Rohan Bopanna at 2017 Chennai Open and had broken into the ATP top 100 Doubles rankings in 2016, further explained what made Nadal so threatening on Philippe Chatrier.

“When the sun comes out it becomes a more bouncy court and the topsin that he uses then becomes even more deadly and also there is lot of space for him to move which makes him comfortable for him to return from so far back behind the baseline, hitting with so much topspin and being aware and quick at the same time to make at the baseline and start controlling the point from after the return. It is just everything about the court is tailor-made for Nadal’s game which makes him look that he is 30 per cent better than everyone else,” he said.

– ‘Alcaraz is not the favourite’ –

Defeating Nadal on clay is the arguably the toughest task in tennis history. Only a handful have managed to part of the elusive club. 19-year-old Alcaraz from Spain became part of the elite club earlier this month after beating the 21-time Grand Slam winner 6-2, 1-6, 6-3 in Madrid Open quarters. And he topped it off with a win against Djokovic just 24 hours later, becoming the first ever player to achieve the magnificent double on clay.

The twin wins, along with his maiden Masters 1000 trophy in Madrid handed him the favourites tag heading into the Roland Garros. But the 33-year-old Indian feels that Alcaraz is still a “dark horse” and not the “favourite” at French Open.

“I think the day and age we are living now, everytime someone performs well on the court, it is just at this era on social media about trying to find the next Big Three and I just think we need to take a moment and appreciate what we have actually witnessed in that era. It is not going to be easy to find the next version of that. Tennis is evolving to the point where there is more competition and it is really up there for anyone to grab on winning a Grand Slam. But the fact is, it’s not possible to have that kind of dominance to have in the past 20 odd years. Alcaraz is definitely the frontrunner now, considering that he is still a teenager now and he has done so well on the clay and on the hard court. So there will be a lot of expectation and hype around him, but we need to take it one match at a time and also appreciate the confident player challenging the legends of the sport,” he said.

“There is a lot of talk about him, but I am going to say that he is not the favourite. It is still between Djokovic and Nadal. He is definitely one of the dark horses. His best results was at the quarters of the US Open last year and his best result at Roland Garros was third round. He is not yet completely used to playing in the second week of a Grand Slam and he is still not used to playing big matches, of five sets, on Philippe Chatrier. So he has got a very good chance as a dark horse and I would be rather surprised if he goes on to win this Grand Slam.”

[Watch Roland-Garros 2022 Morning and Evening Session at 2:30 pm & 7:30 pm IST, LIVE on SONY SIX, SONY TEN 2 (English), SONY TEN 3 (Hindi) and SONY TEN 4 (Tamil & Telugu) channels.]