Novak Djokovic was threatening to pull off a sporting miracle after rain in Paris forced an overnight suspension of his French Open final blockbuster with Rafael Nadal.
With tennis history on the line, a furious Nadal led 6-4 6-3 2-6 1-2 – but down a service break in the fourth set – when the most-anticipated match of the year was abandoned for the day in controversial fashion at 8pm local time.
The two combatants were asked to resume hostilities at 1pm (9pm AEST) on Monday with the final on a knife edge.
Chasing an unprecedented seventh Roland Garros crown and trying to thwart Djokovic’s quest for a rare grand slam sweep, Nadal had an angry exchange with tournament referee Stefan Fransson when the Swede called a second, and ultimately final, stoppage at 6.50pm on Sunday.
The Spaniard was demanding to know why the final wasn’t halted sooner as the court surface deteriorated.
Playing in persistent drizzle, Nadal had been complaining for about an hour about the conditions, reportedly saying he was struggling to see the ball because it was caked in clay.
Fransson disagreed, saying Nadal and Djokovic had no issues when he instructed them to resume after an initial, 32-minute break with the Spaniard ahead 5-3 in the second set.
“I don’t think it was (unplayable) because that’s when they both agreed to come back on,” he said.
The match looked almost over as Nadal charged to a two-set advantage and grabbed an early service break in the third.
But, from 2-0 up, the six-times champion lost eight consecutive games in an extraordinary turnaround, raising the possibility that Djokovic could overhaul the claycourt colossus on Monday to become the first man in 43 years to hold all four grand slam singles trophies.
The prospect of being only the second player in 76 matches – after Swede Robin Soderling in the fourth round at Roland Garros in 2009 – to conquer Nadal in a best-of-five-sets claycourt encounter could not be ruled out.
The lion-hearted Serb had already overcome all odds to stand on the cusp of tennis immortality.
During his incredible 27-match grand slam winning streak, Djokovic saved two match points in last year’s US Open semi-finals against Roger Federer, recovered from a service break down in the fifth set to deny Nadal in a near-six-hour epic Australian Open decider and fought off four more match points against Jo-Wilfried Tsonga in the quarter-finals in Paris last week.
The world No.1 also trailed Andreas Seppi two sets to love in the fourth round.
He seemed no hope of completing the fabled slam when he obliterated his changeover chair after double-faulting to fall a set and break behind at 3-4 in the second set against Nadal.
Unable to penetrate Nadal’s amazing defences, the frustrated Serb instead smashed his racquet through an advertising sign below his courtside seat as his dream began to slip away.
Nadal then held for 5-3 as rain intervened for the first time, enabling officials to remove the damaged seating from Court Philippe Chatrier.
The half-hour break didn’t appear to help Djokovic, who immediately dropped serve again as Nadal went two sets up.
When Nadal broke for 2-0 in the third, there seemed no possible way back for Djokovic.
Suddenly then the fickle weather threatened to alter the course of sporting history.
