Shortly after his first opening‑round defeat on Court-Philippe Chatrier, Rafael Nadal arrived at the press conference room for his postmortem in a jovial mood. After a career of dominance at Roland Garros, where he has so often been untouchable even against some of the sport’s greatest players, he would have been forgiven for feeling a sense of injustice and frustration with a straight‑sets defeat in the first round against Alexander Zverev. Instead, he felt progress. “I was not that far,” Nadal said. “That’s my feeling.”
His demeanour further underlined what has been increasingly clear over the past few weeks. If this really is the end and retirement is imminent it will be because his body made the decision, not his mind. It seems clear that the player who turns 38 next week would love to further elongate his career and he is determined to do everything possible to try.
A month ago, Nadal returned to competition in Barcelona and Madrid still unsure about whether he would even make it to Roland Garros. He had good reason to doubt. After the countless physical issues he has endured, from hip surgery to complications and many unrelated injuries, his ambitions were low. He simply wanted to be sure his body could physically withstand the load of competing at the highest level across the best of five sets.
By those parameters, Nadal’s presence at Roland Garros was actually a step forward. He made it back to the most important court of his career performing at a decent level, he made life uncomfortable for one of the tournament favourites, and he departed still feeling in good physical shape.
Nadal felt he could have beaten many other players in this year’s field, and a better draw would have allowed him the opportunity to build his form round by round. Roland Garros came too late in his recovery and he was handed a nightmare draw, but it was far easier to accept than being out of the game without a hope of making progress.
“I cannot tell you if I will be or not will be [ready] in one month and a half, because my body has been a jungle for two years. You don’t know what to expect. I wake up one day and I found a snake biting me. Another day a tiger,” Nadal said, smiling. “[It] has been a big fight with all the things that I went through, no? But the dynamic is positive the last few weeks. I felt ready. I think tomorrow I will be ready to play again if I have to. But I will not have to.”