Rafael Nadal’s right knee started bleeding after he took a tumble when trying to return one of Felix Auger-Aliassime’s shots early in the second set of their fourth-round clash. The world No 5 dropped his first set of the tournament to the Canadian and fell when changing his footing to chase down a backhand.
Nadal rolled onto the clay of Court-Philippe Chatrier when he was wrong-footed by the ninth seed while serving at 1-1 in the second set. The Spaniard had to change direction and ended up tumbling to the ground, managing to get his racquet on the ball but hitting it into the net.
A few points later, his right knee could be seen bleeding in an incident similar to Emma Raducanu’s US Open championship point, in which the Brit was given a medical time out in line with the rules to patch up the graze and stop it bleeding. The 13-time French Open champion cleaned himself up quickly before the next point and was back to it, not requiring medical attention with the bloodflow stemmed.
The fall was just the start of the longest game of the match, which saw the Spaniard forced to save two break points to hold for a 2-1 lead after more than eight minutes. It came after Nadal lost the first set 6-3 in almost an hour – the first set he has dropped all tournament.
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