Rafael Nadal is not ready to say goodbye
livemint.comRafael Nadal says he might not be done. He’s left the door open to a French Open return, to the point he asked Roland Garros officials to cancel plans for an elaborate on-court farewell. One imagines a scrambled call to a Saint-Germain-des-Prés pâtissier, scuttling a 14-foot macaron pyramid: “Désolé, il ne veut pas de gâteau.
Give it to PSG for Mbappé’s goodbye party." If this was Nadal’s feint to avoid an awkward party, and it’s really over, he is not saying. He says he’d like to be back on the Roland Garros clay all over again, in eight weeks, for the Paris Summer Olympics, so all these Rafa soliloquies and encomiums may be premature. Whatever the case, the 14-time champion, age 37, is out of this year’s French Open—his earliest departure ever, an occasionally tantalizing but ultimately deflating first-round exit to Alexander Zverev, 3-6, 6-7(5), 3-6, before an emotional packed house at Court Philippe-Chatrier.
It’s not the sort of finish anyone wants, for perhaps the greatest warrior tennis has ever seen. Has there ever been a tenant-landlord relationship in sports quite like Rafael Nadal and the French Open? Sports legends have been tied to stadia—Bill Russell to Boston Garden; Lionel Messi to Camp Nou; Cal Ripken to Camden Yards, even if The Streak started at Memorial—but those were permanent homes. Nadal settled in Paris just one fortnight per year.
And yet this tournament became home, to the point Nadal’s French became robust, because why not, he had to give a victory speech every year. Before Monday, he was lifetime 112-3 at Roland Garros. Mull on that for a minute.
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