Djokovic, beaten on Tuesday, would have loved a pop at the Nadal we saw in the second set. Neither player had been finding holding serve easy and there were five breaks of serve each in a match which could have tilted either way. Zverev was playing to his outer limits, with one rally having lasted 44 strokes in a chaotic second set. The length of the rallies between Nadal and Zverev, with both of these supreme counter-punchers struggling to penetrate the other, made some contribution to that. They did not start the match until past 3pm and at the rate it was going before the German's accident it looked possible that it would have gone on for several hours more, pushing Ruud and Cilic's clash deeper into the night. 'The ball was super big and difficult to create spin, I could not create any damage.'Īlthough nobody would have wished Zverev's fate upon him, he probably saved tournament organisers from even more questions about the controversial scheduling of this event.

'The conditions have been the slowest I played in a long time,' said Nadal. The associated humidity made conditions deathly slow and the speed of the match was not helped by umpire Renaud Lichtenstein being hugely lenient with the use of the shot clock between points. When the incident happened, just in front of the courtside box in which British actress Sienna Miller was sitting, there were already more than three hours on the clock, with the match having been played under the roof due to afternoon downpours in Paris. It seems safe to assume that he will not be at Wimbledon and the same is likely to be true for Nadal, although his representative denied any decision has yet been made. He was given a deafening ovation as he waved one of his sticks to the crowd before leaving. The German was still able to return to the court, dramatically, on crutches to shake hands with the umpire and formally concede.

As a result of Zverev's withdrawal, Nadal is now through to yet another Roland Garros final – a stage of the tournament at which he has never lost at during his esteemed career

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