tennisnet.com ATP › Grand Slam › French Open

Roland Garros: Always on Sundays - but not with Djokovic and Nadal

The opening day of the French Open will bring a flood of top-level tennis. However, the two biggest names among men are missing.

by Jens Huiber
last edit: May 21, 2022, 08:28 am

A Sunday start in Roland Garros? Not Rafael Nadal's thing
© Getty Images
A Sunday start in Roland Garros? Not Rafael Nadal's thing

The idea of starting a Grand Slam tournament a day earlier and thus extending it to 15 days did not go down well with all players. And probably still doesn't. Because what if Sunday was supposed to be the last day of a major, and the first of three? Not a nice thought, which is why the Sunday appointments in Roland Garros, the only major that follows this strategy, have been rather cautious in recent years. A well-placed local hero, a French hope among women - and one or two top ten professionals at most, that had to be enough to get started. Not so in 2022. Because almost the whole chapel will be opened there.

With two glorious exceptions: Novak Djokovic and Rafael Nadal . Because that would be too big a risk if the classic on the Terre Battue lost one of its two main protagonists in the opening act. "Too big" is of course relative: Neither Djokovic against Yoshihito Nishioka nor Nadal against Jordan Thompson will have to approach their performance limits.

Zverev against Ofner already in Wimbledon

But otherwise: Alexander Zverev is allowed against Sebastian Ofner, the two have already played against each other in Wimbledon. At that time, Ofner still passed as "Tennis Falco" because of his offensive hairstyle, those times are over. After qualifying, the Austrian certainly brings a lot of self-confidence with him, but Zverev hasn't exactly played badly in the past few weeks, with the exception of the appearance against Holger Rune in Munich.

Carlos Alcaraz will also be seen on Sunday, Juan Ignacio Londero can try his hand at the Spanish teenager. In addition, Diego Schwartzman against Andrey Kuznetsov or Grigor Dimitrov against Marcus Giron - that's something to be proud of. The good news for all those who have to work on the Lord's Day is that there will be two days off. That doesn't happen often in the early stages of a Grand Slam event either.

Here the individual tableau in Roland Garros

rgmap

by Jens Huiber

Saturday
May 21, 2022, 12:41 pm
last edit: May 21, 2022, 08:28 am