"Rafael Nadal's victory at the Australian Open was inspiring" - Jo-Wilfried Tsonga after winning his first ATP match in 10 months
Jo-Wilfried Tsonga's comeback to tennis is off to a good start. The Frenchman who is playing in the Open Sud de France with a protected ranking, defeated qualifier Kacper Zuk 6-4, 6-4 in the first round to post his first victory on the ATP tour since March 2021, and his second since 2019.
Jo-Wilfried Tsonga defeated Rafael Nadal in the semifinals of the 2008 Australian Open to reach the only Grand Slam final he has contested in his career so far. 14 years later, the Spaniard has served as the Frenchman's inspiration on his return to the ATP tour.
Speaking after his victory, the Frenchman credited Nadal's 2022 Australian Open triumph as the spark that made him believe he could successfully return from his injury as well.
"I'm happy to be able to win, it means a lot to me, I haven't played much, only [ten] games in two years. Rafa's victory [at the 2022 Australian Open] was inspiring," Tsonga said.
The 21-time Grand Slam champion spent five months on the sidelines (with a foot injury). He returned to action at the 2022 Melbourne Summer Set, winning the title without dropping a set. The 35-year-old is on a 10-match winning streak, culminating in his 21st Grand Slam title at the Australian Open.
Tsonga, meanwhile, broke into the top 25 for the first time in 2008 and remained in that elite club for almost a decade. In 2018, right before the Davis Cup, he sustained a knee injury that caused him to miss the last three Majors of the year and drop to as low as World No. 239 at the end of the year.
The Frenchman began the process of making a comeback in 2019, improving his ranking to World No. 29 with a 33-19 win-loss record. However, when the COVID-19 pandemic began in 2020, all that progress was lost.
The former World No. 5 did not play any tennis for the rest of the year and an arm injury sustained at the 2021 Open 13 Provence resulted in him spending more time away from the game. In the past two years, the 36-year-old has played only 10 matches and won just once, leading to another drop (World No. 263) in the ATP rankings.
The win against Zuk was his first in 10 months.
In an interview after the match, Tsonga further stated that the recovery process was very painful but he learned to accept it for the sake of playing tennis again. The Frenchman did not want to glorify his first-round win too much, adding that the goal was to keep progressing "little by little" for a long period. In the meantime, however, he said he was glad to be on the right track.
"I won't hide from you that it is not simple. You have to accept to push back the limit, to accept the pain again. The objective is above all to see how long I will last. It is not a great glory to pass the 1st round," Tsonga said. "For the weeks that I have left as a player, the objective is to progress little by little. It's going in the right direction so far."
The Frenchman faces off against fifth seed Filip Krajinovic in the second round. The Serb defeated Alexei Popyrin in straight sets in his first-round encounter.
Rafael Nadal has a 10-4 lead in the head-to-head against Jo-Wilfried Tsonga
The 2008 Australian Open semifinal was the second meeting between Rafael Nadal and Jo-Wilfried Tsonga. After losing the match 2-6, 3-6, 2-6, the former World No. 1 went on to win the next four of their meetings on hardcourt.
The Spaniard has never lost to the Frenchman on clay, winning both of their encounters so far. Overall, their head-to-head record is 10-4 (2-1 in Grand Slams) in favor of Nadal. Their most recent meeting came at the 2019 Paris Masters, which ended in a straight-sets victory for the Mallorcan.