Rafael Nadal, the defending French Open champion who has had shaky starts to both of his first two matches this year, has loudly criticized the schedule makers for putting him on a difficult path to another title.
After getting rained out on Thursday, Nadal won his second round matchup against Martin Klizan early this morning; if Nadal is to repeat as champ he will now have to win six matches in 10 days. Nadal's next opponent, Fabio Fognini, was able to get his match in on Thursday, and will have an extra day's rest over Rafa.
"That's not fair," Nadal said. "And today I was playing almost three hours on court, and my opponent was watching the TV in the locker room. So if you (tell) me that's fair, I say that's not fair."
Following his win, an upset Nadal lashed out at the schedule makers, saying, "I think everybody knows in this room that the schedule of (Thursday) was wrong. That's the real thing. I don't know if the director of the tournament, supervisors, guys who take the positions, they take a bad position two days ago, because when you make the schedule at 7 in the (evening), not 11 in the morning, you know which weather predictions you have for the next days."
He said to reporters that the reasoning for Fognini getting the preferential scheduling, as explained to him, was that his opponent, Lukas Rosol, had to play doubles later in the day and getting Fognini's matchup with Rosol out of the way made scheduling simpler.
"I am sorry, but that's a joke," Nadal said. "You have one more week to play doubles if you want to play doubles. Why do you want to protect the player who has to play doubles? So I'm going to write myself on the doubles draw then and I have the priority to play? That's not the right excuse to make a schedule like this."
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