1. Van de Zandschulp can attack and defend well on clay
The best Dutch tennis player of the moment and number 29 in the world, reached the quarterfinals at the US Open in September last year, on hard court. But he can also play well on clay. As it turned out last year statistics of the Australian Open, Van de Zandschulp is one of the hard hitters on the tennis tour, with an average speed of his forehand of 130 kilometers per hour. He combines those hard strokes with good footwork. That makes him a pretty complete tennis player.
But sometimes Van de Zandschulp seems to be in two minds, because he can attack as well as defend. Fabio Fognini experienced the latter in the second round in Paris; the Italian was so mad that Van de Zandschulp hit every ball back that he demolished a racket after the lost second set. That will never happen to Nadal, but the Spaniard will have to hit a lot of winners. Because if necessary, Van de Zandschulp can force Nadal to defend again with his hard blows.
2. Van de Zandschulp can learn from Söderling and Djokovic
The top spins of the left-handed Nadal have driven many opponents to despair in Paris. There are only two players who could compete with his game at Roland Garros: Swede Robin Söderling, in 2009, and Novak Djokovic, in 2015 and 2021. Nadal has few weaknesses, but these defeats had a common denominator.
Hitting extremely hard and flat ‘into’ Nadal’s forehand is disadvantageous for the Spaniard. He has a long swing, which he often cannot make. If you dare to attack hard on your forehand, you sometimes get a shorter ball as a reward. It’s what Söderling did with his rock-hard forehand. Djokovic could do that with his backhand. Van de Zandschulp has enough power on both sides to try.
3. Rafael Nadal is physically vulnerable
Earlier this month, in the eighth final of the masters tournament in Rome, Rafael Nadal beat Canadian Denis Shapovalov in the first set (6-1). But halfway through the second set, the Spaniard started to stumble across the track. He suffered from his chronic foot injury and lost in three sets. After the game, Nadal sounded very down, saying that he has to live every day with pain in his foot and that sometimes he can’t train because of the pain.
This year, his body is breaking even more often than usual. At the Miami masters tournament in March, Nadal suffered a rib injury, after which he was sidelined for more than a month. Nadal won the first two rounds at Roland Garros in three sets, as everyone is used to. But his body can splutter at unexpected moments.
4. Van de Zandschulp enjoys the big stage
Peter Lucassen, Van de Zandschulp’s coach, said in February that the Dutchman likes big games in big stadiums. It will not be bigger than playing against Nadal on Court Suzanne Lenglen, the second stadium in Paris.
Winning against Nadal at Roland Garros is the biggest challenge of all for Van de Zandschulp, who has shown that he can beat top ten players with victories over Felix Auger-Aliassime and Andrej Roeblev. He took a set from later winner Daniil Medvedev in the quarterfinals at the US Open.
The perfectionist Van de Zandschulp seems to have a hard time mentally against players who are lower in the world ranking than him. The better the opponent, the more he seems in his element. Or, as Van de Zandschulp said with bravura to the Dutch press in Paris on Wednesday: “I can beat anyone.”