A year has already passed, and yet the chronicler still shudders when he recovers the scene.
This was the day of the semifinals at Roland Garros 2022, and Nadal-Zverev was a volcano. They went 3h10m into the game, the thing went on forever, the public writhed in the stands.
Each point, a party.
Nadal was turning 36, but Zverev wasn’t up for birthday presents. The man from Manacor had suffered horrors to score the first set in the tie break, and survived as he could in the second.
Zverev era un purasangre indomesticable.
Zverev came to everything, stretched like gum and served wonderfully, played like angels. Two days before he had taken Carlos Alcaraz ahead, and now he was a torment for Nadal, who fought and fought but he did not see it clearly.
Nadal ran out of fuel.
In the second set, the score had been placed 6-6, and then everything blew up: Zverev stumbled, sprained his right ankle and collapsed on the clay, long he with his two meters tall.
The parish had heard the crack of the ankle, the chronicler had also heard it, and the German’s cries of pain resounded in the venue and silenced the trickle of afternoon in Paris, late-night as the game had gone into the twilight .
The stretcher took Zverev, who disappeared from the scene and would reappear a quarter of an hour later, on crutches, grim-faced, to say goodbye to the parish, and Nadal thus agreed to the final, free way to his 14th crown at Roland Garros , end of appointment.
The German had torn the lateral ligaments in his right foot, his 2022 ended here, the injury was very serious, it was going to paralyze him for months.
(…)
In the fall, Zverev decided to fight against oblivion: he ran various videos on social networks. He was shown sitting in a wheelchair, at the foot of the court, hitting his two-handed backhand, preparing for his return.
He returned this past January, in the Australian United Cup. He had dropped ten places in the ranking: from number 2 to 12. He lost to Lehecka and to Fritz. Zverev was now an elusive and downcast tennis player. He barely made it through one round at the Australian Open, he didn’t grow up in Indian Wells either, let alone Miami.
Decreased in his game and in his self-esteem, the German has been lurching in the ground phase, growing little by little as the commitments progressed, correct in Madrid, better in Rome and even better in Geneva (here he lost in the semifinals), to return to Roland Garros, the scene of his misfortune, perhaps the scene of his redemption.
This Tuesday, Sasha Zverev reappeared in the Bois de Boulogne to overwhelm Lloyd Harris (7-6 (6), 7-6 (0) and 6-1), shake off the demons and reach the second round, where the Slovak Alex Molcan.
He did it several hours before the unknown Thiago Seyboth Wild (Brazilian who came from the previous phase, nobody would have said it because of his tennis, 172nd in the world today) invested 4h15m in throwing Daniil Medvedev, second racket, off the court World Cup (7-6 (5), 6-7 (6), 2-6, 6-3 and 6-4), there was no major surprise of the day: until now, Seyboth Wild –ribbon in his hair, vintage mustache– He had never won a set in the big draw at a Grand Slam.
