Nadal Topples Djokovic in Four-Set French Open Thriller, Advances to Semifinal

In his 59th meeting against rival Novak Djokovic, Rafael Nadal emerged victorious from a four-hour, 12-minute battle, winning 6–2, 4–6, 6–2, 7–6(4) in the quarterfinals of the 2022 French Open. The result brings their career head-to-head record even closer, with Djokovic leading 30 wins to Nadal’s 29.

The match lasted past 1 a.m. local Parisian time.

Nadal is two wins away from capturing his 22nd Grand Slam title, along with his 14th French Open title. He already won the first major of the year in January at the Australian Open, which made him the winningest men’s grand slam winner in tennis history.

The “Big Three,” consisting of Nadal, Djokovic and Roger Federer, have won 60 of the last 72 grand slams. Additionally, the three of them have held the World No. 1 ranking for 891 weeks out of the last 940. Talk about domination.

Nadal will face No. 3 Alexander Zverev on Thursday for the semifinal.

Nadal was dominant in the first set, winning 6–2, against Djokovic and ending the World No. 1’s streak of 22 consecutive winning sets. The first set lasted 49 minutes.

To open the second set, Nadal had seven break points against Djokovic before finally winning one and winning the opening game. The game lasted about 18 minutes.

Nadal went on to win the next three games of the set, before Djokovic followed by winning four games in a row. The Spaniard was able to win one more game in the second set before Djokovic won 6–4 to tie up the match. The second set lasted two hours and 16 minutes.

The third set was a far quicker affair, as Nadal won the first two games and five of the first six before closing it out, 6–2. 

Djokovic turned it around in the fourth set by winning the first three games. It was the first time during the match in which Nadal didn’t break Djokovic on his first serving game of the set. The Serbian continued to dominate in this set as he went up 5–2.

But, Nadal didn’t let Djokovic off that easily. He then won the next three games in order to put the set at 5–5.

Right at the four-hour mark, Nadal won a sixth game in order to put the fourth set in a tiebreak. At one point, the Spaniard led 6–1 points in the tiebreak, but then lost three match points in a row. Nadal did close it out from there, emerging with a 7–4 tiebreak win to close another epic chapter in this historic rivalry.