The Sports Buff ⚽️ ⚾️ 🏈

This was supposed to be one of the best French Open tournaments in history, but in parts, it’s been terrible. Don’t get me wrong the tennis ‘served up’, yes I did that on purpose, has been of good quality.

Novak Djokovic’s quarter-final win over Karen Khachanov was an example of good quality tennis that has been played at Roland Garros. What was supposed to have made this tournament different was that there was no Rafael Nadal, the King Of Clay.

El Matador is injured and with the Mallorcan saying the 2024 is his last season, one of these remaining men in the tournament has a chance to sake a claim for greatness on clay.

For Serbian Djokovic, he is also aiming to win his 23rd Grand Slam to take him outright top in the most Grand Slam titles list. But these two weeks have been spoilt by issues off the court.

Novak Djokovic attracted a lot of criticism for writing a political message regarding Kosovo. Give this guy a seat in Parliament, he turned into a politician and caused a huge uproar as he said ‘Kosovo is the heart of Serbia’.

The double standard is laughable, the world picks and chooses the issues it wants to talk about. Injustices have no prejudice. It’s seen as praiseworthy by some to not shake the hand of a Russian opponent or a Belarussian opponent after a game.

Marta Kostyuk thinks she’s achieving something by doing this. Sport is sport and politics is politics. The politicians have a lot to answer for and their lack of action has left sports people to do their dirty work, to make efforts to stop violence.

In the case of Kostyuk, she’s taking matters too far. Her grievance is that the tennis authorities have allowed Russian and Belarussian players to compete under a neutral flag, but this is something they did in the wake of the doping scandal a few years ago.

So, this isn’t an alien concept. I do sympathise with Russian/Belarussian athletes in the sense that many of them have said they’re anti-war, but they’re getting victimised for politics.

These guys have a right to a career, this is their livelihood. As I have always said, once you open up the issue of politics, then you are not allowed to stop. If one political cause is discussed then it’s expected that all of the issues need to be mentioned.

The problem is, even the French minister of sport Amelie Oudea-Castera has got involved in the debate, Novak Djokovic has been told by her to ‘not get involved’.

 Oudea-Castera went on to add; ‘This message is very activist, very political. You shouldn’t get involved, especially in the current circumstances, and it shouldn’t happen again.’

To lighten the mood at the time of writing, I am happy to say that German Alexander Zverev is through to the semi-final, a year on after retiring injured against 14-time winner Rafael Nadal.

The German will play fifth-seed Norwegian Kasper Ruud. In an emotional quarter-final against Stefanos Tsitsipas, the crowd were heard chanting Sasha, which is something that didn’t go unnoticed by Zverev.

As intriguing as that semi-final will be, all eyes will be on the other semi-final. It can be billed as a master vs apprentice kind of match-up, but either way, it promises to be a classic.

World number one, Spanish rising sensation Carlos Alcaraz, will face world number three and 22-time Grand Slam winner Novak Djokovic. Surprisingly there have not been too many matches between the two.

Djokovic and Alcaraz will be on court first for their semi-final, followed by Ruud’s semi-final match against Zverev, let’s just hope observers can talk about the matches rather than the issues off the court.

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