Rafa Nadal has had a fairly placid road this year so far at Roland Garros. He is in the quarterfinals without having lost a single set (12-0 and 72-23 in games) and he has spent barely seven and a quarter hours on the track. This Tuesday (around 19:00, Eurosport) he faces the young Italian of 19 years and 75th in the world Jannik Sinner, a debutant in the tournament to which the Balearic never faced. That, precisely, has been the common denominator of the five rivals that have touched the number two in the ranking so far, Egor Gerasimov, Mackenzie McDonald, Stefano Travaglia, Sebastian Korda and, now, Sinner: they had never come across him before.
This circumstance occurs for the first time in Nadal's long career in the French Grand Slam, where he has already accumulated 16 participations. Nothing like this had ever happened to him before. Always, in the first five rounds he had come across a tennis player against whom he had played at least one match previously.
What is certain is that if the one from Manacor advances, it will finally meet an old acquaintance, since his possible opponent will come out of the duel that Diego Schwartzman, who recently beat him in Rome, and Dominic Thiem, who eliminated him last January in the quarterfinals of the Australian Open, will also play this Tuesday.