After win, Nadal says schedule is ‘not fair’

PARIS — Rafael Nadal wanted to get a few things off his chest.

Not about the quality of his play Friday, which fell below his usual standards at Roland Garros — for the second match in a row, he dropped a lethargic opening set before winning.

What really bothered the usually affable Nadal was the way the French Open’s scheduling decisions, and the weather, combined to force him to now play on consecutive days, while his third-round opponent today, Italy’s Fabio Fognini, was “watching the TV in the locker room” on Friday.

“That’s not fair,” Nadal said, his arms crossed, his voice stern.

“This is not right,” the seven-time champion in Paris said moments later, shaking his head and arching his left eyebrow.

What flustered Nadal, basically, was that his 4-6, 6-3, 6-3, 6-3 victory over Martin Klizan of Slovakia was supposed to be played Thursday but wound up being postponed because of rain — in part because it was the third match slated for its court.

The 27th-seeded Fognini’s secondround victory win over Lukas Rosol, meanwhile, was No. 2 on its court and finished Thursday. Nadal’s point: When there’s rain in the forecast, everything possible should be done to ensure that two matches whose winners will face each other next should be completed on the same day.

Nadal also didn’t like that while Fognini-Rosol followed one women’s match — which, because they are best-of-threesets, tend to be shorter than the men’s best of five — Nadal-Klizan followed both a men’s match and a women’s match. His match should have taken priority on a day when showers made rescheduling likely, Nadal argued, because if women “have to play two days in a row, (it) is not a big deal.”

Ana Ivanovic, the 2008 French Open women’s champion, sided with Nadal on that point, saying men should “get more time to recover.”

“Especially now, when he has to play day after day, I think he’s right. They should play early,” Ivanovic said after reaching the fourth round with a 6-3, 6-2 win against Virginie Razzano, the Frenchwoman who stunned Serena Williams in the first round last year.

Another complaint from Nadal: He said he was told by tournament officials they wanted to make sure Rosol got on court Thursday because, unlike Nadal, Men’s seeded winners: No. 3 Rafael Nadal, No. 7 Richard Gasquet, No. 8 Janko Tipsarevic, No. 9 Stanislas Wawrinka, No. 12 Tommy Haas, No. 19 John Isner, No. 21 Jerzy Janowicz, No. 29 Mikhail Youzhny in the second round; No. 2 Roger Federer, No. 4 David Ferrer, No. 6 Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, No. 11 Nicolas Almagro, No. 15 Gilles Simon, No. 23 Kevin Anderson, No. 32 Tommy Robredo in the third round. Men’s seeded losers: No. 10 Marin Cilic, No. 14 Milos Raonic, No. 18 Sam Querrey, No. 20 Andreas Seppi, No. 25 Jeremy Chardy, No. 30 Julien Benneteau in the third round. Women’s seeded winners: No. 2 Maria Sharapova, No. 12 Maria Kirilenko, No. 13 Marion Bartoli in the second round; No. 1 Serena Williams, No. 4 Agnieszka Radwanska, No. 5 Sara Errani, No. 8 Angelique Kerber, No. 14 Ana Ivanovic, No. 15 Roberta Vinci, No. 20 Carla Suarez Navarro in third round. Women’s seeded losers: No. 21 Kirsten Flipkens in the second round; No. 26 Sorana Cirstea, No. 29 Varvara Lepchenko, No. 32 Sabine Lisicki in the third round. On court today: No. 1 Novak Djokovic vs. No. 26 Grigor Dimitrov, No. 3 Rafael Nadal vs. No. 27 Fabio Fognini, No. 7 Richard Gasquet vs. Nikolay Davydenko, No. 9 Stanislas Wawrinka vs. No. 21 Jerzy Janowicz, No. 12 Tommy Haas vs. No. 19 John Isner; No. 2 Maria Sharapova vs. Zheng Jie, No. 3 Victoria Azarenka vs. No. 31 Alize Cornet, No. 7 Petra Kvitova vs. Jamie Hampton, No. 9 Sam Stosur vs. No. 18 Jelena Jankovic, No. 13 Marion Bartoli vs. Francesca Schiavone. he also was in men’s doubles.

“I am sorry, but that’s a joke,” Nadal said. “Why do you want to protect the player who has to play doubles? So I’m going to (sign up for) the doubles draw then, and I have the priority to play?”

A request for comment from tournament referee Stefan Fransson was declined by French tennis federation spokesman Christophe Proust, who said: “The federation does not want to respond. We don’t want to get drawn into a controversy. It’s not the first time that the scheduling has been criticized.”

Now Nadal will need to win six matches over10 days if he’s going to be the first man to collect eight trophies at one Grand Slam tournament.

“Well, if I can win (today), I’ll have a day off, and that should be enough,” the Spaniard said. “I don’t think that will be a problem.”