With less than a week left for the upcoming French Open which includes the best players battling for the second Grand Slam title of the year, we have on the scope, the men’s reigning champion Rafael Nadal, number one ranked Novak Djokovic and the first timer, Nick Kyrgios,
For the past three years, Novak Djokovic has lost to Rafael Nadal, as seen in the 2010 and 2014 finals, out of the nine french titles won by Nadal, six of those were against the Serbian, although Djokovic hasnt fallen behind this year with his impressive start for the season with five titles already under his belt, one of them his fifth Australian open title back in February, beating Andy Murray, 7-6, 6-7, 6-3, 6-0.
On the other hand this year Nadal failed to capture any of Monte Carlo, Madrid, Barcelona or Rome for the first time since 2004, although with a shaky start the Spaniard has only lost the French title once in the past decade. The French open is the perfect opportunity for Djokovic to complete his Grand Slam set, the biggest challenge for Novak ranked number one at the moment is to overcome the Mallorcan for the first time in French Open history.
The past couple months have been hard for the Australian Nick Kyrgios, after suffering from an injury in the quarter-finals for the Australian Open, Kyrgios has earned for the first time in his young career a seeding for the Parisian event starting this next sunday, throughout the year the Australian has come face-to-face with the world’s best players, earlier this month he reached his first final before losing to Richard Gasquet in Estoril, following his win over Roger Federer in Madrid he lost his opening match in Rome last week, despite his ranking at number thirty he has shown great promise, not only beating Federer in Spain but also taking down the then-world number one ranked Nadal at Wimbledon, his low ranking will have him thrown out against the very best at the early stages of the tournament,
Although Kyrgios is unlikely to win in France (66-to-1) it will be interesting to see his development in the upcoming Roland Garros, as well as Djokovic’s attempt to finally claim his first victory in the tournament for his Grand Slam to be complete or if Nadal finally bounces back from his not-so stellar performance so far, will he prove everyone wrong earning his tenth title or will he keep going down the world ranking.
