• Roland Garros Men's draw

There is an inevitable retro point before the 58th game between

Rafael Nadal

and

Novak Djokovic

(this Friday, not before 5.30 pm, DMax, Veo TV channel). At 1:00 p.m.,

Stefanos Tsitsipas

will play

Alexander Zverev

in the first semi-final. Since they met precisely here, at Roland Garros, in the 2006 quarter-finals, when the Serbian retired due to injury with an adverse double 6-4, a series of proportions unimaginable then has been built, no matter how much they already began. to make it clear that we were facing two vintage tennis players.

“I have said before that the rivalry with him and with

Roger

[

Federer

] has made me a stronger player, it has allowed me to understand what I needed to improve when I started in professional tennis to get to the level they were at. But yeah, I would probably pick Rafa as the biggest adversary I've ever had in my career. The preparation for a match against him, in any match, on any surface, on any occasion, is always different from any other, ”says the world number 1, who dominates the sequence 29-28, but was beaten in both last crosses, both on land.

The appointment, like many of those who

agree

in these times, has a colossal dimension.

On October 9, Nadal defeated him 6-0, 6-2 and 7-5, with one of the most conclusive scores in this long shared history, to win his thirteenth title on these tracks and equal the 20 Grand titles. Federer slam.

The Serbian, at 18, is also no stranger to that race.

"It was a master class"

They have been measured in three finals (2012, 2014 and 2020) on these tracks, all of them favorable to Nadal, but the most recent one is still in everyone's memory. «I sign to match the level of then. It was a master class on how to play tennis on clay. And in conditions that theoretically did not favor him. The ability to adapt is spectacular. If we had put together a script we would not have come out as perfect as reality »,

Carlos Moyà

recalled yesterday

, just finished Nadal's training session. They also did it in the semifinals of 2013, with the left-hander triumphing in the only cross in this tournament in which they went to five sets. Djokovic, however, is, along with

Robin Soderling

, the only player to have beaten Nadal in this tournament: he did so in the quarterfinals of 2015, in three sets.

As usual, Nadal's pace has been much firmer.

His reaction to

Diego Schwartzman

in the quarterfinals, after losing the first set in the tournament for the past two years, was spectacular.

Djokovic raised two adverse sets in the round of 16 against rookie

Lorenzo Musetti

, before he left 4-0 down in the fifth.

He finished his quarterfinal match against

Matteo Berrettini

around midnight on Friday, erratic and the victim of various adversities, such as stopping the game for more than 20 minutes to evict the public at 11:00 p.m., following the restrictions derived from the pandemic.

Overtaken again by Nadal in the recent final in Rome, the 2016 champion rarely seemed that far behind in the contest with the Spaniard.

Not even his best version could be enough to refute the forecasts.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

Know more

  • sports

  • tennis

  • Rafael Nadal

  • Novak Djokovic

  • Roland Garros

Roland Garros 2021Nadal leaves the first set in the tournament, but beats Schwartzman and is already in the semifinals

Roland Garros 2021Nadal punishes Sinner's sins and enters the quarterfinals like a rocket

TennisNadal wins his tenth title against Djokovic and is again the top seed at Roland Garros

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