Rain suspended Rafael Nadal‘s first-round match at the French Open as the 10-time champ led 6-4, 6-3, 0-3 over Italian Simone Bolelli on Monday.
The match will resume Tuesday, the same day Serena Williams plays her first Grand Slam match since winning the 2017 Australian Open while pregnant.
Nadal, 31, is trying to tie Margaret Court‘s record for singles titles at a Grand Slam event (Court won 11 Australian Opens, but seven came when it was the Australian Championships, an amateur event.).
The Spaniard is an overwhelming favorite, ranked No. 1 in the world and going 19-1 on clay this spring leading into Paris. He doesn’t have to worry about Roger Federer, who skipped the entire clay-court season for a second straight year.
Other notables advanced in straight sets Monday, including 2016 French Open champion Novak Djokovic and Caroline Wozniacki, winner of the last major, the Australian Open.
Djokovic — a former No. 1 now ranked 22nd, his worst spot since 2006 — beat 134th-ranked qualifier Rogerio Dutra Silva of Brazil 6-3, 6-4, 6-4, quickly recovering after dropping the opening two games.
Since winning the 2016 French Open to complete a career Grand Slam and become the first man in nearly a half-century to collect four consecutive major trophies, Djokovic has taken a step back. He has not added another major championship since, and after dealing with right elbow trouble for more than a year, he finally opted for surgery in February.
“I had to dig deep,” Djokovic said, discussing the work it took to try to rebuild his game.
“It has been difficult to face … the most, say, challenging injury that I have ever had. It’s been a long 12 months behind me, but I’m starting to play better, I feel like, in the past couple of weeks,” said Djokovic, who is being coached at Roland Garros by his former long-time mentor Marian Vajda. “Not thinking about the elbow. Playing pain-free, which is the most important thing at the moment.”
Another former French Open champion exited in the first round as Stan Wawrinka lost a five-set battle with Guillermo Garcia Lopez of Spain.
Looking a shadow of the player who won the title in Paris three years ago, Wawrinka struggled with his serve and hit an awful lot of unforced errors (72) in his 6-2, 3-6, 4-6, 7-6 (5), 6-3 loss.
“I won three Grand Slams in my career, and I know what it takes to do it,” said Wawrinka, who was seeded 23rd and is ranked only 30th, territory unfamiliar to him since April 2008. “And my goal is to get to my top. Sooner or later, I will.”
Wawrinka only recently returned to the tour after missing three months to rest his left knee, which was operated on twice last August. He’s played 11 matches in 2018, going 4-7.
As Monday’s match stretched to 3½ hours, Wawrinka was hindered by the physical strain of playing in a fifth set for the first time since his French Open semifinal victory over Andy Murray a year ago. But that wasn’t the biggest impediment to success.
“It was more the difficulty of continuing to go for it mentally,” he explained.
The owner of one of the prettiest one-handed backhands in the sport, Wawrinka — who is again working with coach Magnus Norman — only managed 12 winners, compared with 35 unforced errors, with that shot. He finished with 72 unforced errors in all, 32 more than Garcia-Lopez, who never has been past the fourth round at a major tournament.
“There is no frustration. It’s just tough,” said the 33-year-old Wawrinka, who’s been as high as No. 3 in the rankings. “But I’m on the right way. It was very close today.”
Former top-ranked player Victoria Azarenka also bowed out, beaten 7-5, 7-5 by Katerina Siniakova.
Azarenka, a semifinalist in Paris five years ago, is currently ranked 84th after giving birth to a son in December 2016.
After a poor clay-court campaign punctuated by early exits in Madrid and Rome, the two-time Grand Slam champion was unable to turn things around against the 54th-ranked Siniakova.
She hit 38 unforced errors on the remote Court 18.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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