Idols become rivals. Friends become foes.
That is often how it works in tennis, and–at least four a few hours on Sunday afternoon in Paris–that will be the case when Rafael Nadal and Casper Ruud battle for the French Open title.
It will mark the first-ever meeting between Nadal, 36, and Ruud, 23. But that doesn’t mean they aren’t familiar with each other. Quite the contrary. In September of 2018, the Norwegian made none other than the Rafael Nadal Academy in Mallorca his home training base. He has been a frequent visitor ever since, and naturally that means he has become one of Nadal’s main practice partners.
“I always felt like I’ve played with good intensity in my game and I need it to play well, but I’ve gotten that extra 10 or 20 percent from being there,” Ruud said of the academy in a 2019 interview with the ATP. “That’s the small margin that can change whether you’re No. 10 or No. 60. It’s not like they’ve changed my technique, but they’ve helped with all the strokes. It’s motivating to have Rafa there and even Toni coming to the practices and pushing you a bit more.”
Well, fast forward to 2022 and Ruud is even better than No. 10. The 23-year-old finds himself at eighth in the rankings and he will climb to sixth next week regardless of Sunday’s result. Ruud already made a breakthrough earlier this year by reaching the title match of a Masters 1000 (lost to Carlos Alcaraz in Miami) and now he has made an even bigger leap into a Grand Slam final.
His reward is a dream matchup with the player who has looked up to pretty much forever.
“I grew up looking up to Rafa, the player I’m gonna face in the final,” Ruud said in a post-match interview following his 3-6, 6-4, 6-2, 6-2 semifinal victory over Marin Cilic on Friday. “He is a perfect example of how you should behave on court. He has been my idol for all my life.”
In his press conference the No. 8 seed was asked how many of Nadal’s 13 French Open finals he watched. “Probably all of them,” Ruud responded. “I think I could probably tell you all the finals and who he has played and who he has beaten, because I watched them all on TV. It’s gonna be amazing to be there myself when you have seen players like…start with Puerta, Federer, Djokovic, Thiem…Wawrinka…all the guys who have played him in finals. So to be a part of that group myself is something I can always brag about after my career.
“Hopefully I will of course give it a shot at the title; (it) would be nicer to be able to brag about the title, as well, after my career.”
After Sunday it will be different, but for one more day Ruud can only brag about practice matches played against the 21-time Grand Slam winner.
“We have trained (on) hard court, indoor, clay court; we have played some practice sets,” Ruud reflected. “And, yeah, he pretty much has always beaten me. There have been some close sets, 7-6, 7-5, but it always goes his favor. But it’s because we are playing in the academy and I want to be nice to him. You know, when you are the guest you need to be a nice guest…. No, I’m just kidding.”
Sunday, though, will be no joke.
“To play Rafa in a Roland Garros final is probably the greatest challenge there is in this sport,” Ruud concluded. “He’s 13-0 in the finals, so (it) just shows that it might sound like an impossible task. But of course I will give it a shot like the other 13 people before me have done. It’s obviously going to be tough. We all know what a great champion he is and how well he plays in the biggest moments and the biggest matches.
“I’m just going to try to enjoy it. I will be the underdog. I will try to tonight and tomorrow night dream about great winners and unbelievable rallies, because that’s what it’s going to take if I want to have any chance. I will need to play my best tennis ever.
“But I still have to believe that I can do it.”
Belief. He may have learned that at the Rafael Nadal Academy, too.
can Ruud do it?
I reckon Ruud actually wins this maybe in 5. Nadal is boss but Ruud is peaking right now.
I think Rafa will win this one, in four sets.
Rafa has problem against players like Zverev (and maybe Cilic at his best), when they are hitting big without missing much to overpower him. It’s Rafa’s resilience and his unbelievable passing shots done at the right time that get him out of troubles time after time . Rafa is mentally wired in such a way that when he’s in desperate situations, he could just produce his best shots to get him out of troubles, like it’s do it or you would get killed situations. It’s a bit strange, and Rafa being a bit stingy, that he only reserves such unbelievable shots for desperate situations, when it would save him more time and energy on court, if he could produce those shots more frequently.
Against other types of players, Rafa could and would impose his more aggressive game on them. I think Rafa knows Ruud’s game well (and vice versa for Ruud), so it’s Rafa’s court craft and his tennis acumen that may win him the final, against someone who is familiar with his game.
Of course, the court conditions, humidity etc will play a part, which I feel all the more Rafa may start aggressively and imposes his game on his opponent from the get go, unlike the Zverev SF when Rafa started tentatively ( perhaps because Rafa has high regards for Zverev’s super aggressive overpowering game, evidenced by the way he put away Alcaraz in the QF).
Ruud may start playing aggressive tennis too, because he knows if you start tentatively, you are toast against Rafa.
ya, hope it would not be an anti-climax like AO 2014 or IW 2022
Raj..please …say positive things only..send him good vibes.
We cannot entertain any negative thoughts…
Exactly Sanju!! Y be negative at this point? Rafa is into the finals and it was never even in the cards!! He proved almost everyone wrong!!! Based on predictions he shouldn’t even be there!! Even now ppl r saying if not for the injury Zverev would have won 🙄! So let’s believe in our Rafa and look forward to a great match baring any unforeseen.
It’s just to denigrate rafa that ppl are saying zverev would have won..why so ? At the point it happened, rafa was up a set and second set was 6 all.. so why would zverev have won ? They say if match would have gone longer, z would have won ..what makes you say rafa would not have won second set n wrapped it in 3…
There are no what ifs in tennis ,only facts and facts alone. Zverev maybe better player but better players don’t always win, you need to win the important and bigger points . Last I saw rafa had won 4 more points when the match was stopped ,so whatever ppl are saying is just to denigrate rafa n ofcourse they are fans of another player in particular or maybe to just give sympathy to Zverev
I believe that’s exactly what it is. If they delude themselves into believing that Zverev would have won then it makes them feel better about the pain in their heart. But what I say to them is, what if the same had happened to Medvedev at AO22, would anyone think that Rafa would have won eventually?! Of course not!!! So how do they know that Zverev would have definitely won?! I know exactly the reason for that narrative, and it is quite lamentable!
Great article….loved reading about Ruud’s background with Rafa and his Academy. Rafa in 3.
Interview by ivanisevic on the match
Not a ball has been struck at wimby n he says Novak will win wimby . Ofcourse he is the huge fav
https://www.tennismajors.com/roland-garros-news/ivanisevic-exclusive-i-cant-sleep-now-but-novak-will-be-ready-for-wimbledon-604713.html
Ruud in 5
The local weather in Paris tomorrow
Sunday, 5 June 2022
The weather tomorrow in Paris will be quite hot with temperatures reaching 24°C. During the evening and night time the temperatures will drop to 16°C.
https://www.weather25.com/europe/france … e=tomorrow
Top
Is it thats good. I saw on http://www.weather.com and it was saying thunderstorms. but its good if does not rain
Meanwhile, Swaitek is making a meal out of Gauff!! I like them both but it would be very nice to see Guaff take it to a third! 😃
Bravo Iga!
Sorry for Coco but she is very young
Who can beat Iga? Will she win wimby?
I love Iga for her good heart
Her blue and yellow ribbons and just now she mentioned her support for Ukraine
Thank God for someone with a heart!
I still miss Ash
The 2 of them could have had a great rivalry
Yes, I was very disappointed when Ash retired!!
Congratulations Iga!!
I am at a stage where i know rafa will retire after maybe a couple of years. I constantly think whether I’ll be able to support anyone else after that. But now we have Iga and Ruud and Alcarez. Maybe there is hope.
Vamos Rafa
Yeah but somehow it’s not quite the same!! Don’t think I’ll ever be able to support anyone like I do Rafa; he is just SPECIAL!!!!
I will still continue to enjoy tennis and support players here and there but my dedication to RAFA even after he retires will not allow me to be this engaged with any other player especially while Rafa is still playing. Rafa forever for me 🤗
It’s better we don’t either Mona. The last 17 years ups n downs were enough..we need our sanity intact:-) it’s not easy to replicate this passion n self inducing stress again for another player if we like ourselves:-) haha
I hear you mona. There will never be another Rafa Nadal.
Fan since 2007. Back then we had tennistalk.com haha.
Vamos rafa
Ivanisevic thought that Djoko could win the QF match, and he also thought that (and I believe there were many others who thought so too), the way Zverev played in the SF, he could be winning the first two sets (and perhaps win the match?).
How often Rafa proved these people wrong! They always think or thought that the more aggressive or attacking player was the better player in a match and should be the one winning the match, but Rafa has/had other ideas.
He’s a counter-puncher, so give him due respect for both his defensive and attacking skills! He may not be outright attacking all the time, but still, he could attack when it’s needed, and counter his opponents’ attacks most of the times with his own brand of attacking tennis (and he’s not defending all the time!) hence his successes so far throughout his career.
Zverev seemed to be the better player in the SF, yet it was Rafa who had set points, before a TB was needed. You need more than an aggressive game to be a complete and great player,; you need different dimensions and varieties in your game.
The young Alcaraz, for example, has shown us that even though he has quite a complete skills set, he doesn’t have enough variation in his game, and he couldn’t vary his game to counter Zverev’s overpowering attacks.
Rafa OTOH, has shown enough varieties and dimensions in his game to be a complete player even though he’s a counter puncher kind of player, and he’s winning his matches whether he’s considered the better player in the match or not.
Its strange that . I conclude its the counterpunching style of play that goes with the never say die attitude- that weve seen over the years from Borg,Connors,Hewitt, Djokovic and Nadal – it seems more effective to win those big points perhaps because its lower risk that all out attack.
Zverev serving at 6-2 ..Fed at 40-15 in Wimby 19- just needed to hit an ace, but still lost the set/match. Fed was considered the better player in that match- but you still lose if you cant play the big points.
QF Djoko-Rafa : I didnt see 4th set but read Djoko hit unforced error into the net on one of his set points and played tentative on the other- I saw FAA and Zverev play short at vital moments and Rafa was able to hit a forehand winner.
I just rewatched the tiebreak .. Zverev served at 6-4, serve-volleyed(on clay against Nadal! ) but hit the volley long-have to say that was an unforced error -he had plenty of time on it , went for length instead of angle.
On the next point, he pounded a forehand into the corner that hit the line- Nadal gets it back somehow, impossible on a smaller court.Then , Zverev hits cross court to Nadals forehand …it reaches the service line. a shot Rafa will hit all day. All he had to do was go back to the same place as his previous shot ,behind Rafa theres no way he would have got that going the other way.
Sorry for going on..Im just trying to understand why thes ebig points are so hard to win against Rafa …then again, its RG ,Zverev did amazing to push him as far as he did before injury.
One pof the best contests Ive seen for a while and I wish Zverev a speedy recovery , and hope he can win a Slam someday soon.
This particular point at 6-4 in the TB goes to show who’s the better player in general, as Rafa had shown his anticipatary skills whilst Zverev had not the experience or shot selection ability to hit back to the same spot but chose to go CC to Rafa’s FH instead and so lost the point ( because Rafa’s execution of the CC FH under pressure was still perfect!).
Oh yes, another thing is executing a shot under pressure, how well one could do that sometimes determines whether you win or you lose the match, as the above given examples have shown.
Well thats a basic thing in most sports.
Theres always pressure , but it does help when you’ve been there before and conquered the difficult situations. A bit of luck is needed too .
There was another point in same tie break when Nadal hit a ridiculous net cord that just dropprd in and hit the second serve in the net.It really looked like a double fault which would have been the set over.
So fine margins in these matches!
Well, its an example where the huge court suited Rafa. Anywhere else that one-two punch would have won the point.
And before anyone mentions the roof and humidity, that argument is getting tired and not that big a factor.If anything Zverev likes the fast court and high bounce also esp on serve. He a good record against Nadal.
You see, you talked about the big court, it’s as if Rafa hadn’t won on smaller clay courts!
You think had the court being smaller, Rafa would not adjust his game plan, and maybe played a bit more offensively? And, who knows Zverev would not be able to execute his one two punch when he wasn’t given much chances to do so had Rafa being more aggressive on a smaller court?
Rafa could be more aggressive on his ROS on the smaller clay courts too!
You can’t change one factor or one aspect of the conditions and then assume that everything else would remain the same!
Both of them going to try their best. Ruud is not going to be pushover. I think we will get to see more long rallies. if Rafa with comes with level what he had against Wawrinka when he won his 10th or the level with Novak in QF, then this trophy is his.it may go to 4 sets. we can not count ruud out on clay
Lucky at 7.32:
You make a lot of assumptions there about how aggressive Rafa would play, something you always criticising him for not doing. What a load of speculation.
In Madrid,Rome or anywhere else why wouldnt Zverev have won that point with that shot?
Anyway we’ll never know how that match would have panned out , Zverev did double fault twice when serving for the set
Another example of this theory:How often have you seen a player double fault on important points, but the receiver just has to get the ball into play-its never considered an error if he doesnt.
Not exactly assumptions when Rafa has proven time and again, at Madrid, Rome and MC that he could play a more aggressive game to beat his opponents. You don’t win 11 MCs, 5 Madrid, 10 Rome titles by playing defensively all the time.
OTOH, your point that Zverev would’ve won the point had the court being smaller, had remained as an assumption because it had not been proven yet.
So? You DF and it’s your opponent’s fault that you DF? You have yourself to blame, for not being able to withstand pressure! And the ability to withstand pressure is one of the qualities that make a great player.
And luck-just as Rafa was when that first serve ball skidded off the net and dropped onto the line avoiding a double fault on set point down .
I hope the weather is fine and the roof is open, hates the humidity that affects players physically.
I understand that the weather will be same as on Friday 🤷🏽♀️
The ‘better’ player may not win, or may not always win the match. But how we define who’s the better player? By being the more attacking or more offensive of the two?
Chances are the winner of the match usually wins more points than his opponent, and we do but rarely see the winner of the match wins fewer points than his opponent.
The attacking player will always look like he’s creating a lot of chances for himself but he will usually make many errors too in the process.
At the end of the day, it’s winning more points (including those crucial ones) than making errors that win you the match, not the style of play.
Agree. Its percentages that count, but its common for total points won to be very close you’d be surprised how often even with what looks like a clear winner.
The point I was making was that when it gets really close, other things being equal -I think its better to be a counterpuncher than an attacker – because pressures more on the attacker to hit a winner . Its the same principle in war-defenders have a big advantage .
No, an attacker need not always hit a winner, an attacker can also force an error out of the defender! It’s not only clear winners that wins the point, but forced errors out of your opponent also counts towards points won by the attacker.
So, the attacker do not need to attack no matter what, but has to be wise in his attacking, compare Fed to Shapo for example, and see who wins more points and who hits more errors.
Attacker hitting winners or forcing errors :Splitting hairs as you have done throughout this discussion.
I doubt whether Rafa would have returned Zverevs serve and forehand any different anywhere else- but it unlikely be proven .Im just saying the bigger court gave him more room in this instance. I leave you to speculate on whether Zverev would have played the same rally any differnently on another smaller court and Rafa deal with that differently-too many permutations there for me to be interested in.
Interested in seeing anyone who can return Zverevs first serve aggressively with much success ? His second, maybe.
Come on, by now who doesn’t know that the PC court is a huge court, and one would play differently depending on the court conditions?
You are the one who started all the assumptions and so I counter them with different points of view.
Have you not seen Rafa returning big serves from Karlovic at Shanghai and with successes? Or Raonic’s on the HCs for that matter. Those courts aren’t as big as the PC court but Rafa still could return those huge serves.
Perhaps it’s precisely because of Rafa’s known ROS prowess that created doubts in Zverev’s mind, hence his DFs (even though I personally feel that Rafa’s ROS isn’t as good compared to the past).
One interesting point about the Rafa SF, Rafa had won more of the shorter points and fewer of the longer points, I can’t figure what to make of that.
If Zverev was great in his attacking, he should be winning the shorter points > winning the longer points. If Rafa was being defensive then why was he winning the shorter points more than the longer points?
Why indeed? Why would he play defensively at all since being up against a physical problem and draining conditions he need to keep the points short.
I make a simple point about one ball just reached by Rafa that would have been out of reach on a smaller court – I’m not questioning how great a player Rafa is esp on clay compared to Zverev,so I’m not sure what overall point you make other than trying to counterpunch any comment that seems to be negative about him.
Zverev could have won the first two sets, he could have lost them,but we never know .
Point taken, it’s just that you seem to doubt Rafa’s abilities against very aggressive players, even though he beats them most of the times.
I would acknowledge that very aggressive players are hard to beat, even for Rafa, but that doesn’t mean that Rafa couldn’t beat them when Rafa is playing well, even though sometimes luck do play a part.
I’ll stop here, now watching the final.
As you said earlier, its important to have more to your game than just be very aggressive which is why a lot of the one-dimensional big hitters eventually come up short by making too many errors. Zverev does have a good record against Rafa though. He didnt do a lot wrong in that match on Rafas best court.
And while he struggled/got lucky at times , Rafa deserved that luck after battling so much pain all fortnight. Phenomenal to win his 14th RG.
Im not much of a fan of his game on other surfaces, but on clay those heavy spun, full blooded swings esp on forehand are amazing .