French Open 2023 | Roland Garros without Rafael Nadal is almost like Roland Garros without the red clay

Rafael Nadal has won the French Open 14 times, an unusually high number at a single venue. (File Photo: AP)

Rafael Nadal’s withdrawal from this year’s French Open, while not surprising, takes away some of the lustre from the year’s second Grand Slam. Nadal has won this event 14 times, an unusually high number at a single venue, which also made him intrinsic to the tournament for the last two decades, since he first won the first title in 2005. Roland Garros without Nadal is almost like Roland Garros without the red clay.

In a press conference on Thursday, Nadal announced that he is unlikely to play till the end of the year, owing to a hip injury at the Australian Open in January. “The evolution of the injury I sustained in Australia has not gone as I would have liked. I have lost goals along the way, and Roland Garros becomes impossible,” he said.

In what was an expected—and increasingly dreaded—result of the injury is that he has seen the finish line to his storied career. “I’ll look to be 100 percent ready for next year, which I believe will be the last year of my professional career,” he said at his tennis academy in Mallorca, Spain.

Next year would be two years since his friend—and fiercest rival— Roger Federer decided to call it quits, again owing to an injury from which he saw no way back. Nadal’s career, unlike Federer's, has been plagued by injuries, but the Spaniard has always, almost miraculously, returned from them, usually by winning a title or more. If at age 36 the body has finally given up, battered and bruised by the relentless strain of competitive, international tennis, then that was expected too.

“What leads me to do,” he said at the press conference in response to a question on why he is still fighting, “is that I don’t like words, but somehow I feel strong enough to say it: I think I don’t deserve to end up like this. I have worked hard enough so that my end is not here in a press conference.”

Federer, whose long injury layoff ended inevitably in retirement, made the announcement suddenly last year, played a doubles match with Nadal in the Laver Cup and was done. There was no long-drawn drama leading up to it, though there was the understandable clamour among fans to attend the Laver Cup in London.

Nadal has given enough of a warning—about 2024 possibly being his final year as a professional—which would allow fans time to watch him for one last time. That would not begin with this year’s French Open, an event that would seem bare without Nadal’s grunting forehands and long rallies followed by the raised arms of celebrations. He has won an astonishing 112 of 115 matches he has played at the venue since winning his first title—also the first time he played the event—in 2005.

“So Roland Garros will be always Roland Garros with or without me. There will be a new champion and I’m sure the tournament will be a big success,” said Nadal, who shares a men’s record 22 Grand Slam titles with Novak Djokovic.

“It may sound extreme, but I think you could argue Rafael is more important than the French Open in a way,” Eurosport reported L’Equipe journalist Quentin Moynet as saying in the Rome Open press room. “You don’t see many statues of players in any sport outside a stadium while they are still playing. That’s a real statement of the impact he has made on tennis in our country and in sport as a whole.”

A two-time French Open finalist Alex Corretja told Eurosport, “I thought that he was going to be able to win, even if he didn’t play too many tournaments before because he is Rafa—the greatest guy in history, for sure, on those courts. I feel empty. It is not going to be the same without Rafa at Roland-Garros.”

Never known to give up on a tennis court, Nadal’s decision on the French Open has been speculated over the last many weeks. Since he pulled out of the Monte Carlo Masters in early April, Madrid Open in late April followed by Rome in the first week of May, it was increasingly clear that the Spaniard was not ready for his return to competitive tennis.

“I’ll not establish a date for my return. I’ll see how my body responds and take it from there,” Reuters reports Nadal as saying. “If I keep playing at this moment, I don’t think I can be there next year. I don’t know if I’ll be able to come back in the highest level and compete for Grand Slams. What I will try to do is to give myself the opportunity to go back to what could be my final year competing at the highest level.”

Since 2005, only three other men—Federer (1), Stan Wawrinka (1) and Djokovic (2)—have won at Roland Garros. With Wawrinka on the decline, only Djokovic stands a chance in 2023—unless there is a brand new champion emerging out of the impossibly long shadow cast by Nadal.