Package for Roland-Garros, Rafael Nadal will fall around the 130th place in the world after the Parisian tournament. A situation in which the Spaniard has not found himself for more than twenty years, in April 2003.
Twenty years since that had happened. Since April 2003, Rafael Nadal, whose rise we then know, no longer knows what it feels like not to be among the top hundred in the world. A situation which it would have happened well that the best clay court player of all time will however experience again, paradoxically at the end of his favorite tournament. Forced to forfeit – he officially announced Thursday that he would be absent in Paris – for Roland-Garros, he who hoped to lift the trophy in his garden for the fifteenth time in his career and would have once again defended his title Porte d ‘Auteuil, the Mallorcan, who now has 2,445 points, will lose the 2,000 points that allowed him to win his 14th coronation in Paris last year (he swept Casper Ruud in the final). Currently 13th (Editor’s note: He will slip into 15th position after Rome), he will therefore fall once this Roland-Garros is over, which will suffer from his absence beyond 130th place or around.
Today, Nadal would find himself… 136th!
Thus, if the tournament took place today, Nadal would find himself… 136th, just behind his compatriot Pedro Martinez, unknown to all Spaniards, even tennis fans, and one rank ahead of the Australian Rinky Hijikata, another unknown on the circuit. Either the worst ranking since April 2003 for the one who, in the same way, had never missed a single Roland-Garros (18 participations, 14 titles). The difference is that the last time Nadal found himself outside the Top 100, he was 17 and had never played in a Grand Slam tournament. Sixty-seven Major appearances later and here he is with 22 titles to his credit. His fall in the rankings nevertheless undoubtedly constitutes the end of an era. And comes to sanction even more violently before the hour this injury of Melbourne that nobody could imagine having such consequences at the time.
