the times | Tuesday May 24 2022 2GM 57
Sport
Swiatek cruises to 29th straight win
The remarkable Iga Swiatek winning
streak continues. The world No 1 and
2020 French Open champion from
Poland racked up a 29th consecutive
victory by sweeping past
Ukraine’s Lesia Tsurenko 6-2,
6-0 in only 54 minutes.
Told that one supporter
held up a sign that read “She
may never lose again,”
Swiatek replied: “I’m pretty
sure that I am going to lose
at some point.
“I also want to be ready
for that and be aware that
there are many players out
there who can play great
tennis and are really
dangerous.”Defending champion crashes out
The defending champion Barbora
Krejcikova was knocked out at the first
hurdle, losing 1-6, 6-2, 6-3 to the 19-
year-old French wild card Diane Parry
in front of an excitable crowd on Court
Philippe-Chatrier.
Krejcikova was playing her first
match for three months after suffering
an elbow injury. “I think tennis-
wise it wasn’t that bad,”
the Czech said. “I think
physically it was a little
worse. I have to start
somewhere, so it’s a pity
that it had to be here
and I didn’t have anyother matches. But I think it’s a good
way to move forward.”Wawrinka’s ‘freezing water’ rant
Stan Wawrinka missed out on a
second-round meeting with Rafael
Nadal after losing 2-6, 6-3, 7-6 (7-2), 6-3
to France’s Corentin Moutet. The
three-times grand-slam champion
from Switzerland has struggled since
his return from knee surgery earlier
this year and was strikingly tetchy
yesterday about the temperature of
the drinking water on offer. “It’s been
three changeovers,” he told the
umpire. “I asked you for some water
that’s not fricking freezing, because it’s
not good, and it’s the French Open and
you cannot get normal water. You
think it’s normal?”stuart fraser’s french open diary
Swiatek’s last loss was
in Dubai on February 14TIMES PHOTOGRAPHER MARC ASPLANDH
igh among the more
impossible challenges in
world sport is being
drawn against Rafael
Nadal in the first round of
the French Open. He has never lost a
first-round match here at Roland
Garros. He has played 57 first-round
sets and lost only three. You felt then,
yesterday, for Jordan Thompson.
Thompson is Australian and ranked
No 83 in the world. What was it like
to play Nadal yesterday? Well,
Thompson gave an answer at 1-1 in
the second set when he leant against
the net post and wrapped his head in
his arms as if he could weep.
At another point, rage briefly
grabbed him and he smashed a ball
high out of Court Philippe-Chatrier.
At deuce and 2-2 in the third, he
hurled his racket to the ground, and
that wasn’t out of frustration with
himself, it was because he had
dominated Nadal in a brilliant, long
rally, pushed him back and pulled him
side to side and then, just when he
was about to go for the kill, Nadal
unleashed a bullet down his left flank
that he couldn’t get a racket on.
What was he to do? He looked up
at his support group in the stand and
gave them an I-don’t-know shrug.
You don’t get much of an easier ride
if you are drawn against Novak
Djokovic. That was the fate of
Yoshihito Nishioka, Japan’s world
No 99, yesterday. He found the
Parisian crowd particularly
sympathetic to his cause but they
could not cause Djokovic the
remotest concern either.
Here were the two giants of the
game, Djokovic and Nadal, starting
their campaigns. There was a
predictability about the authority
with which Djokovic quelled Nishioka
in straight sets, 6-3, 6-1, 6-0.
What was more significant here
was that Thompson was being
dispatched with the same kind of
authority as almost every one of
Nadal’s 17 first-round victims before
him. This was important to Nadal
yesterday because he arrived here at
his favourite place in the world with
his career end-game story being
written.Nadal is out of practice and
hurt? Could have fooled me
Owen Slot
Chief Sports
Writer, ParisNadal has won 106 matches at Roland Garros in his career and lost only threedefeats. All of this was abundantly
apparent to Thompson. He knew
what to expect, but then actually
being on the receiving end still shook
him.
Nadal just tore into him, right from
the first point, launching into him
with a battery of lethal groundstrokes.
All Thompson could do was to hang
on and make a few returns. From
somewhere he found a passing shot to
win that first point. “I don’t know how
I won it,” he would reflect later, “but I
was thinking, ‘Shit, that’s what I’ve
got to do to win a point?’ ”
Only too rarely was he able to
repeat the feat; Nadal was far too
strong. His destruction of the
Australian appeared to be laid down
with relish. For such an admired,
decent man off the court, Nadal can
be a heartless executioner on it. And
he just can’t wait to run round that
backhand and load up for the killing
blows. Thompson was beaten up from
beginning to end, the final scoreline
6-2, 6-2, 6-2.
So that is what Nadal looks like
when he is out of practice and his
body has been letting him down. It
doesn’t mean his left foot is suddenly
mended and it doesn’t mean that all
his opponents will be pulled apart and
left hanging on the net post.
The draw gave him Djokovic in the
quarter-final and then Carlos Alcaraz,
the new young star, in the semis. It
will require an almighty performance
to get past them both. Two weeks ago,
you wouldn’t have backed him to get
that far. All we know for sure, after
round one, is that he definitely isn’t
done yet.Nadal is less than a month away
from turning 36, so at some point, the
game will indeed end. It is the way
that he has been falling apart of late
that suggested that maybe that time
was nigh.
Of the sport’s holy trinity, Roger
Federer is 40, and still talking of a
comeback from knee surgery this
year. Djokovic is 35 and keeping the
wear-and-tear well-hidden. Nadal
completed one of the great physically
exacting triumphs in the Australian
Open this year but recently, it
seemed, has been starting to pay
for it.
A rib fracture sidelined him for six
weeks. This left him under-practised
for the clay season, at which point a
recurring, chronic left-foot issue came
back to haunt him and instead of his
traditional swing of clay-court
victories, his Roland Garros prep
finished with an early exit from the
Italian Open and Nadal discussing
the pain-management process and
saying that, “The time will come
when my head will say, ‘Enough.’ ”
Is anyone ready for that yet? Two
weeks on from Rome, it would appear
that Nadal isn’t, at least not for a
homecoming like this.
How much of a lift can a single
sporting venue give an athlete?
Alexander Zverev, last week, came up
with a specific answer for Nadal and
Roland Garros: “30 per cent,” he said.
As in 30 per cent better.
We weren’t exactly supposed to
take this as a specific stat, but 13
French Open titles is a figure worth
respecting, as is his win-loss record
here, which is 106 victories to threeTIMES PHOTOGRAPHER MARC ASPLANDof the match but eventually came through to seal her first win at Roland Garros