French Open 2013
35,000 spectators at the premier clay court
tournament in the world
The seven-time French Open champion Rafael
Nadal, Spain, twice let a lead slip away...
... allowing Novak Djokovic to summon his best
tennis of the day and equalise
Nadal had stood two points from the final in the fourth set when he inexplicably
let Djokovic off the hook by dropping serve at 6-5 up. Djokovic blitzed
through the fourth set tiebreak 7-3 and then streaked into a 4-2 lead in
the decider when Nadal's fighting instincts kicked in to leave the Serb
floundering. A forehand long on match point secured Nadal an unprecedented
eighth appearance in the Paris final.
See report and videos at Eurosport/Yahoo
A question to our readers: what possible justification
could we have to present this tennis
report on our chess news page? The solution to this puzzle will be revealed
here tomorrow.
The solution
As litereally hundreds of readers explained to us, the chess connection
was a passionately cheering Vladimir Kramnik in the audience in the third
picture above.
The picture was taken by GM Magesh
Panchanathan with an iPhone off the TV broadcast on an LG flat screen.
Magesh sent it to us while the Nadal-Djokovic match was in its fourth set,
with the message "I am watching the French Open semis between Nadal
and Djokovic and happened to notice an unusually animated Kramnik cheering
for Djokovic!" Thanks Magesh for this lovely little contribution to
our news page.
Indeed, Vladimir is a big Djokovic fan, while his wife Marie-Laure (with
the hat on the left) was rooting for the Spaniard. There was tension in
the air when we spoke to both on the evening after the match, but in our
estimation the marriage will survive this difference of opinion and attitude.
