By Mark Hodgkinson
The Telegraph
June 1, 2024
There was a double sense of satisfaction at Roland Garros yesterday, with Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal reaching the semi-finals and preserving enough energy to suggest that their much-awaited meeting has all the makings of a classic. The sense is that their Friday match may leave the Sunday final as a real afterthought.
This is supposed to be the most demanding of the four Grand Slams, fraying players mentally and physically, but the two main contenders have reached the business end of the tournament with a wide-eye freshness and a renewed sense of purpose. It promises more than a few pyrotechnics, the world No 1 against the man of the moment, a teenager playing his first French Open.
The colour and the atmosphere of their matches may have been quite different, Federer continuing with his smooth and cultured run and Nadal showing plenty of urgency and brutality of intent, but they have had little to trouble them thus far. Federer has yet to drop a set, Nadal has lost only one.
Federer, who reached the semi-finals here for the first time in his career, was never in any danger against Victor Hanescu, an unseeded Romanian, and advanced 6-2, 7-6, 6-3. Nadal delighted in his performance in his all-Spanish quarter-final, defeating David Ferrer 7-5, 6-2, 6-0 with his explosive and confrontational game, at one point firing a forehand straight at his opponent from whites-of-the-eyes range.
Federer was in bullish, self-confident mood. "I said from the start that I didn't think my draw was extremely tough," he said. "You know, I just thought that it was a regular draw. It was put to me, 'Look, you got this hell of a tough draw.' And I looked at the draw and I thought, where is this tough draw that everybody is talking about?"
Nadal and Federer will be meeting for the first time on this surface, having avoided each other during the European clay-court season. Their two previous matches have been on a cement court in Key Biscayne, with Nadal defeating the Swiss in the third round last season, and in April this year, when he led the five-set final by two sets to love and then came within two points of victory.
Each can prevent the other from making history. Nadal is attempting to become the first player since Mats Wilander, then an unseeded 17-year-old, to win the French Open on his debut. And Federer has hopes of becoming only the sixth man to win all four Grand Slam events, having already added two Wimbledons, an Australian Open and a US Open to his portfolio of trophies.
Only twice has Federer experienced defeat this season, losing to the Russian Marat Safin in the semi-finals of the Australian Open and to Frenchman Richard Gasquet in the quarter-finals at Monte Carlo. Safin was celebrating his 25th birthday that day, and Nadal will turn 19 on Friday. It would cruel, and fairly bizarre, for Federer if he were to lose to two birthday boys in quick succession at Grand Slam events.
The key period of Nadal's victory was the business end of the first set. He had already saved two set points at 4-5 on his own serve, and he then avoided another with the most astounding of forehands: he was forced almost as wide as the advertising hoardings, and hit the ball on a perfect topspin parabola down the line and just inside the baseline. Ferrer could hardly believe what he had just witnessed, but then Nadal did it all again in the next game, once more ignoring all the geometries and age-old orthodoxies of a tennis court to give himself two break points, converting the second and then serving out the set. Ferrer, suffering with back pain, faded badly in the second and third sets.
Hanescu, the quiet man of tennis, caused Federer no problems, never finding a ploy to bump his opponent off cruise control. The only shock came when Hanescu tried some amateur aerobatics, jumping to attempt a shot through his legs. It was dangerous and potentially very painful.
Andrew Murray, the British top seed, reached the quarter-finals of the junior event with a 6-2, 6-2 win over Gianluca Naso, of Italy.
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