Nadal is battling injury and against expectations. Can he beat Zverev and move closer to a 14th title?

Big day of tennis. Rafael Nadal fights against the wind, against injury and against expectations to reach the semi-finals of Roland Garros, where he is trying to win his 14th title. He’ll face Germany’s Alexander Zverev.

Sure, Roland Garros is Nadal’s tournament. The Manacor native has broken absolutely every record here, winning 13 titles and dominating 110 of the 114 matches he has entered. But before this year’s edition, there were big doubts.

Although Nadal dominated the Australian Open and then made a string of several wins in a row, only that the health problems that have plagued “Rafu” his entire career were heard again. He hadn’t played many tournaments before his favourite French Open and for a while it wasn’t even clear whether he would play in Paris.

But the 36-year-old Nadal is a tremendous fighter. He did compete at the French Open, although in his own words he is definitely not at 100% health-wise, more like 75. But it doesn’t show at all, “El toro” first without losing a set knocked out Thompson, Moutet and Van De Zandschulp, then after a great fight he overcame Auger-Alliasim.

In the quarter-finals he faced Novak Djokovic, where many considered the Serbian world number one the favourite. But Nadal gave one of his best performances against his rival and won 3:1.

Fourteenth title on the horizon

The 25-year-old German knocked out Spanish star Carlos Alcaraz in the quarter-finals and is looking for his first Grand Slam. At Roland Garros, he repeated last year’s appearance in the semi-finals, where he crashed out to Stefanos Tsitsipas’ racket.

This season thus shows us that Nadal must never write himself off. When he made his debut in Australia in January, he jumped on the courts after almost half a year break. Nobody gave him much of a chance, he was expected to drop out in the first rounds. But the Spanish fighter dominated the tournament against all expectations, despite losing the final to Medvedev 0:2 in sets.

Therefore, now that he has his 14th Roland Garros title and 22nd Grand Slam in his sights, we can’t expect him to slow down or for Nadal to break anything.

Source: Roland Garros, MARCA