Juan Pablo Varillas’ Path to Roland Garros Uncertainty

In Buenos Aires, minutes before leaving to train with Gonzalo Bueno and his coaching staff, Juan Pablo Varillas took his cell phone and found out that, as planned, he did not enter the main draw of Roland Garros due to his ranking. The cut was made with ‘Juanpi’ in 103rd place, and the last to enter was the Frenchman Luca Van Assche (99), as five tennis players used the PR (protected ranking, which a tennis player can use when he is stopped for a long time due to a serious injury). Precisely one of them was Rafael Nadal, who is ranked 644 and yesterday returned to competition at the ATP 500 in Barcelona (he defeated the Italian Fabio Cobolli in straight sets), playing a match on clay after two years.

Juan Pablo Varillas won the Challenger Santiago 2024. (Photo: Rebeca Ampa / TAM)

Although at the moment Juan Pablo Varillas is in the Roland Garros ‘qualifiers’, which will be held from May 22 to 26, he can access the main draw and avoid this instance if four tennis players, of the 99 classified by ranking, decide not to. compete due to an injury or personal decision. Will it be possible? Without going too far, for the 2023 edition of the French Grand Slam there were 11 casualties, the most notable being Rafael Nadal, Nick Kyrgios, Marin Cilic and Andy Murray, among others. Of course, the limit for counting these absences is May 21; that is, hours before the start of the ‘qualy’.

The Varillas calendar

Almost a month before the start of Roland Garros, Juan Pablo Varillas decided to drop out of the qualifying for the Madrid Masters 1000, which starts this Saturday, to do a ‘mini preseason’ in Buenos Aires, where he lives and has been training. His return to the courts is scheduled for the week of April 29 at Challenger 175 in Cagliari, Italy, where he will play the qualification stage. The following week, he is also enrolled in the ‘qualities’ of the Masters 1000 in Rome. Depending on his performance in both tournaments, and if he manages to access the main draw of the French Grand Slam, ‘Juanpi’ will play another tournament in the week of May 13, or in any case he will return to Argentina to continue training and then fly to Paris.

It should be remembered that Varillas defends 180 points in this edition of Roland Garros, since in 2023 he managed to reach the round of 16 after defeating the Polish Hubert Hurkacz, seeded number 13, and falling in the fourth round against the Serbian Novak Djokovic, 3 in the world back then (this year he is the first seed).

With this panorama, Varillas only has to continue training and wait for those four losses that are very possible. There are two tennis players who are coming off a long break and could give up playing the tournament: the Russian Aslan Karatsev (45th) and the British Andy Murray (56th) who have not competed since January and March, respectively. We just have to wait.

Novak Djokovic beat Juan Pablo Varillas 3-0 (Photo: AFP).

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2024-04-18 00:20:07
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