The 'king' and the 'favourite'

   MADRID, 2 Jun. (EUROPA PRESS) -

Roland Garros 2022 enters its final stretch to meet its champions in the men's and women's singles draws. There are only eight tennis players left who will fight to lift the Musketeers Cup, on Saturday in the case of the girls, and on Sunday, in the case of the boys.

Four survivors in each table that will fight from this Thursday when the two women's semifinals are played, while it will be Friday when it is the men's turn, with the trick for Rafa Nadal's national tennis. We review the four candidates and the four candidates for victory.

MALE PAINTING.

1. Rafael Nadal. Little to say about the authentic 'king' of Parisian red clay. 13 times champion, 110 wins and winner of 21 'Grand Slams', numbers that make him the rival to beat in a Philippe-Chatrier where he moves like in the garden of his house. He has only lost three matches in Paris and only once in the semi-finals, last year against Novak Djokovic. He took his revenge against the Serbian last Tuesday with a high level and now he will have to deal with another serious candidate, the German Alexander Zverev, who will face him on his 36th birthday.

2. Alexander Zverev. The one from Hamburg, number three in the world and Olympic champion, is going to play his fifth semifinal in a 'big', although he only surpassed that barrier at the 2020 US Open. Semifinalist last year against the Greek Stefanos Tsitsipas, he arrives reinforced by his great victory in the quarterfinals against Carlos Alcaraz where he made it clear that his serve and two-handed backhand are his great weapons. Despite not starting the season well on clay and being marked by his incident in Acapulco with the chair umpire, he straightened up and played the final in Madrid and was a semifinalist in Rome. His balance with Nadal is 6-3, although he already knows what it's like to beat the man from Manacor on clay, since he did it at the Caja Mágica in 2021, in conditions that 'favoured' him more. He is trained by the Spanish captain of the Davis Cup, Sergi Bruguera, double winner of this 'big'-

3. Casper Ruud. The tennis player from Oslo, eight in the world, is the youngest of the four semifinalists. At 23 years old, he has placed his country on the world tennis map and is facing a great opportunity to play his first 'Grand Slam' final. This year he already played the final of the Miami Masters 1,000 against Carlos Alcaraz and has had a somewhat irregular season on clay, with his best result just before playing in Paris, with the semifinals lost against Novak Djokovic in Rome.

4. Marin Cilic. Nobody counted on the Croatian tennis player to be in these final rounds, but the 33-year-old from Medjugorje has been dodging his rounds quite well. Executioner of the second seed, the Russian Daniil Medvedev, losing only six games, and of the also Russian Andrey Rublev, in a tough match of five sets, he is, together with Nadal, the only one who knows what it is to win a 'big', the US Open in 2014, and he only needs Roland Garros to have played all the 'Grand Slam' finals since he did so at Wimbledon in 2017 and Australia in 2018.

FEMALE PAINTING.

1. Iga Swiatek. Who put the bell to the cat? The young Polish player, just turned 21 (on Wednesday) and champion already in Paris in 2020, is confirming herself as the great rival to beat in this spectacular campaign in which she has already won 33 straight. At Roland Garros 2022, the world number one has only lost in a set, in the 'tie-break' against the Chinese Qinwen Zheng in the round of 16, and she has yielded 26 games. She is the only one of the four semi-finalists with experience in these types of matches.

2. Daria Kasatkina. The Russian player, 25 years old and 20 in the world, will be the first to try to end the Polish streak, although her record against her this year is reduced to having played eleven games in her three duels. She shone a few weeks ago with the semifinals and is for the first time in the penultimate round of a 'Grand Slam'.

3. Coco Gauff. The American, 23rd in the ranking, is confirming at 18 the expectations that she has been raising for a long time. She was already a quarter-finalist in Australia and on this very stage last year, and now she has overcome this barrier and done it without losing a set. She along with her compatriot Jessica Pegula she is also in the semi-finals of the doubles draw.

4. Martina Trevisan. The Italian is without a doubt the great revelation that there is usually in the women's team of the 'greats' and Roland Garros in particular. She is the one with the lowest ranking of the four (59), the most 'veteran' (28 years old) and the only left-hander, but she was already in the quarterfinals in Paris two years ago and has just won in Rabat before traveling to France.