French Open is missing big names – but it will be more exciting because of it

The jasmine is flowering at Roland Garros, while the red clay glows under cloudless skies. Paris in the springtime is living up to its billing. But there’s one key ingredient missing. His name is Rafael Nadal.

As the rank and file prepare for Sunday’s opening round, Nadal remains at home in Mallorca, nursing a dodgy hip. His 18-year lease on these 34 acres is over. Ticket-holders will still be able to enjoy his era-defining forehand, but only as captured in the modernist sculpture that stands at the north end of the site.

And Nadal is not the only big-name absentee. In September, Roger Federer and Serena Williams both retired. Last week, Andy Murray pulled out to focus on his beloved grass, while Emma Raducanu’s three-pronged surgery has left Britain without a single woman in the draw.

2023 thus represents a very different French Open. Some insist that the tournament has already been devalued, and that the eventual men’s champion will need an asterisk by his name. Others fear a collapse in viewing figures.

But for those who follow the sport closely, there is also a buzz of excitement. For all Nadal’s greatness, he turned the men’s tournament here into a formality. His mind-boggling match record at Roland Garros – 112 wins and three defeats since 2005 – makes Manchester City’s Premier League reign look ephemeral.

This year, by contrast, the French Open is living up to both parts of its name. Instead of one odds-on banker and 127 rank outsiders, there are four leading contenders. Twenty-year-old Spaniard Carlos Alcaraz starts as the narrow favourite ahead of Novak Djokovic. Then come last week’s Rome finalists: Russia’s Daniil Medvedev and Denmark’s Holger Rune (also 20).

Every British tennis fan should be familiar with Djokovic – he has won seven Wimbledon titles, after all – but the other players on the shortlist also make for entertaining viewing. They bring diverse and varied skill-sets. Medvedev uses every inch of the court service, returning serve from a position deeper than the Mariana Trench, while Alcaraz and Rune are driving a trend towards more touch and guile.

The French Open is always the connoisseur’s slam. Clay requires greater tactical ingenuity because the ball decelerates more on contact with the ground, making it harder to end points quickly. It also takes spin more readily. The slice-heavy drop shots used by Alcaraz and Rune bite and die in a little explosion of red dust.

The drop shot has enjoyed a welcome resurgence of late, thanks partly to Alcaraz’s example. Data compiled by Golden Set Analytics show that Alcaraz – the world No 1 and top seed in Paris – was playing about twice as many drop shots last year as the tour average. Even more importantly, he won 65 per cent of those rallies, an overwhelming margin when the world’s best players usually claim 55 per cent of points over the long haul.

Drop shots are a blessing for viewers. They mean that players are now moving on both the x- and y-axes rather than simply shuttling right and left like a typewriter carriage. Alcaraz – who plays them off both forehand and backhand wings with equal facility – is a master of the art. If his opponent reaches the ball – which is unusual – he often follows up with a cheeky lob back over their head.

Alcaraz is thus showing off a far wider tennis vocabulary than most of the baseline grinders who have emerged from Spain since Nadal (another supreme exponent of the drop shot). And the Parisian fans are sure to respond in kind: with shouts of “Allez”, “Ole”, or the ten-note trumpet salute that they reserve for moments of high excitement.

Here is the final reason why Roland Garros is so special, and a must-see for any serious tennis lover. It’s the fans. The French arguably play more tennis than any other nation, and they’re a demanding bunch who know the sport inside out.

The punters here are a stylish lot, all sunglasses and silk scarves, but they’re also notoriously unruly – especially by comparison with the prim and proper folks at Wimbledon. If you get shirty over a line-call, they’ll start seething like a pond of piranhas. If you’re up against one of their own, they’ll make you feel like a pantomime villain. It’s all rather invigorating for a sport which tends to be over-polite.

The bottom line is that, on Sunday, the French Open begins a new epoch. By the transient standards of sport, Nadal’s domination here feels like geological time: the Rafazoic, perhaps? It seems implausible that anyone can come close to matching his record. But who knows? In the absence of the King of Clay, all bets are off.