Clay court king against Tour Dominator, Rafael Nadal against Novak Djokovic – the dream final of the French Open is perfect: the two tennis giants will fight for the title in a direct duel in Paris on Sunday.
Rafael Nadal won his 99th victory in his 101st appearance at the French Open. Against Diego Schwartzman from Argentina, the Spaniard won 6: 3, 6: 3, 7: 6 (7: 0). After three hours and nine minutes, the 12-time winner in Roland Garros converted his first match point.
The outsider Schwartzman was unwilling from the start to give the favorite Nadal easy games. He fought for two breakballs in Nadal’s first service game, which he fended off and after 14 minutes (!) Made it 1-0. Both came to breaks as a result, hardly a game did not go beyond debut, and it was only after more than an hour that the 34-year-old second in the world ranked the first set for himself.
Schwartzman, who defeated US Open winner Dominik Thiem in five sets in the quarterfinals, showed a decent performance. Again and again he brought his counterpart into distress during long rallies, forced Nadal to make an unusually large number of mistakes and also used tactical tricks such as a slower serve to lure Nadal out of his usual return position.
But all the efforts did not pay off in the second set of a still good match. Nadal broke, a now discouraged Schwartzman not – it was 6: 3 after another three quarters of an hour. Nadal led 2-0. In the third set, however, the 28-year-old semi-final debutant did not give up and came to his second two hours after his first break of the match. He showed strong tennis especially when it came back, but almost every personal service game turned into a tremendous game.
Nadal has to go into the tiebreak – and wins
But even Nadal suddenly weakened with his own service, which he gave twice. When the score was 5: 5, an extraordinary game developed: Nadal was 15:40 behind, played magic balls and scored three points in a row, then his opponent struck back, but Nadal stayed in front – it was 6: 5 after 65 minutes of the third Sentence. Schwartzman countered – 6: 6, tiebreak.
In this, Nadal scored right at the beginning on Schwartzman’s first serves, the Argentine then misplaced a ball – the decision. Nadal won the tiebreak 7-0 and is in his 13th final in Roland Garros.
Djokovic after a five-sentence thriller in the final
Djokovic had to survive a five-sentence thriller in the semifinals. Only after 3:54 hours of hard work on the court Philippe Chatrier did the world number one show his typical jubilee ceremony. He wrestled the courageously fighting Greek Stefanos Tsitsipas 6: 3, 6: 2, 5: 7, 4: 6, 6: 1.
Djokovic fought a duel at eye level with the shooting star Tsitsipas, but initially used his chances much more effectively. In the third set, Djokovic missed a match point and then had to spend valuable energy in order to prevail. Djokovic has lost only one of 38 duels on the tour this year. In New York, when he was disqualified in the last sixteen of the US Open. Winning the title at the French Open would probably heal the wound for good. For Djokovic it is the fifth final participation in Roland Garros, in 2016 he won the tournament.
