Rafa Nadal gets in maiden French Open action; warms up for Paris Games with doubles victory at Swedish Beatstadn play
The 22-times Grand Slam winner paired up with Norwegian Casper Ruud to beat the second seeds Guido Andreozzi and Miguel Reyes-Varela (6-1, 6-4) in the Swedish clay.
Nadal has won the WTA 250 event once before, as a singles player in 2005 when he was just starting his professional career.
It was the second time in three years that Nadal had taken this decision, as he did not participate at Wimbledon to prepare for the Olympics on his beloved clay courts of Roland Garros, where he has captured a historic 14 French Open singles titles.
On the subject of his own performance, he added: “I’m happy and I think it was a good match. On court, the 38-year-old said: “We played quite well in that first time we’ve been on a Wimbledon match together [and return to play], which is fun after almost 20 years.
I have such great memories from this place in ’03, ’04 and (20)05 that I enjoyed your interview today,” he said. “It’s just fun to be out here this week and hopefully we can keep it going.”
