This time last year, the weather in Paris was unseemly. It rained cats and dogs for days, the Louvre shifted its artworks, the Seine-side promenades were flooded, and the French Open became a nightmare for organisers and fans. The schedule was shuffled and rejigged, and every square metre of shelter became a refuge from the elements.
This year could not have provided a greater contrast. From qualifying week onwards, the temperatures soared, such that a walk through the back streets to Roland Garros before 9am left the body dripping in 30C heat. The walk back home 12 hours later was the same. In between, in the full sun, spectators and players often baked in 37C.
It was all good news for the schedules, of course. Play began promptly and, on one long, long day, it continued to within a minute of the latest ever finish at around 10pm.
At last, come Friday, the storm clouds gathered in earnest for a long-overdue burst of rain. Yet for all the threats, the sun continued to punctuate heavy grey clouds, and claps of thunder were cancelled out by claps from the packed courts.
So Nadal, perhaps warned of approaching rain, raced through to the fourth round for the loss of just one game to a hapless Nikoloz Bashashvili 6-0, 6-1, 6-0. It was the first time the Spaniard had done so in a completed match at Roland Garros, and he had now played here 77 times—and won 75.
His assessment? “I think I played great. Was my feeling, no?”
He is indeed playing great, and probably to no-one’s surprise, he is looking more and more like a nine-time champion with his eye on a 10th. After all, he had just won his 20th match on clay this year, having sealed his 10th Barcelona and Monte-Carlo titles and his fifth Madrid title. He had just won his 39th match of the year, having also made the finals of the Australian Open, Acapulco and Miami.
He will tomorrow celebrate reaching the fourth round with his 31st birthday but, this man of simple pleasures will spend it watching Real Madrid in the Champions League final. And come Sunday, he will take on fellow Spaniard Roberto Bautista Agut, who beat Jiri Vesely, 6-3, 6-4, 6-3.
Also in this quarter, No20 seed Pablo Carreno Busta beat No11 seed Grigor Dimitrov, 7-5, 6-3, 6-4, to set a meeting with No5 Milos Raonic, who beat retiring Guillermo Garcia-Lopez, 6-1, 1-0.
Defending champion Novak Djokovic followed Nadal onto Philipp Chatrier to take on the feisty Argentine Diego Schwartzman under heavy cloud that oozed drizzle on the ever-darkening red clay.
They had played each other only once before, when the now No41-ranked Schwartzman was just beginning to emerge on the tour—it had been an easy win for Djokovic—but if there was any surface where Schwartzman could create problems, it was clay. He won his only title in Istanbul last year and picked up a couple of top-20 wins through the European clay swing: Bautista Agut and Albert Ramos-Vinolas.
However he was playing one of the best in the world, and Djokovic had been picking up his form nicely through the clay season: quarters at Monte-Carlo, semis at Madrid, final at Rome. He had his 58th match-win at Roland Garros in his sights, to tie third on the all-time list at Roland Garros behind only Nadal and Roger Federer.
What could possibly go wrong?
Well 21 errors in the first set from Djokovic did not help, though Schwartzman was keeping pace with him on that front. Indeed Djokovic went 4-1 up but the Argentine levelled with some remarkably big hitting from the baseline for such a short man—seven inches down on Djokovic. He broke to serve for the set, and survived a string of deuces to take the lead, 7-5.
In the second set, Djokovic dug in, finding more of his metronomic rhythm to the corners, and he broke down a resistant Schwartzman at the fourth attempt in the eighth game and served it out, 6-3.
Djokovic had hit 13 winners for just nine errors—but that proportion would reverse again in the third set. Schwartzman pummelled his forehand, found initial resistance from the Djokovic backhand, but finally broke for 5-3, and came back from four break points to hold, 6-3.
All the statistics suggested that Djokovic was ahead—winners, serving, overall points, net—but he trailed, even once he had built a 4-0 lead in the fourth set. Now it was raining, now there was disruption in the crowd, and now some Djokovic irritability drew a warning from the umpire. Schwartzman capitalised with one break back but Djokovic had been stung into action, he was focused and he held to love, 6-1.
Schwartzman was now clearly beginning to flag—and he needed a medical time-out—while Djokovic began to flow. By the end, he looked in fine fettle, closing out set and match, 6-1, but it had been a hot-and-cold match.
A standing ovation from the crowd for Schwartzman as he packed and left the court left a warm glow over Philipp Chatrier, but defending champion Djokovic knew it was he who had weathered the storm.
A little surprisingly, he will next face not the young No16 seed Lucas Pouille but Ramos-Vinolas, who survived the French crowd, five sets, and three and three-quarter hours, 6-2, 3-6, 5-7, 6-2, 6-1. The Spaniard reached his first and only Major quarter-final last year, right here, and made his first Masters final only two months ago in Monte-Carlo. However, he has yet to beat Djokovic.