Injury to Monfils an unfortunate outcome after thrilling quarterfinal win

Gael Monfils beats Roberto Bautista Agut with a forehand down the line, booking his ticket to the semifinals against Rafael Nadal.

MONTREAL— Gael Monfils wiped the sweat from his brow, sliced a serve out wide into the deuce court and advanced to the service line to put away the last point of a quarterfinal match that lasted 144 minutes. A quarterfinal match with Spain’s Roberto Bautista Agut, which featured several 30-shot rallies and a number of marathon-length games.

It finished 6-4, 3-6, 7-6 (2), and with that Monfils raised his arms, he pumped his fist, and he smiled wide and dragged his feet behind him on his way to the ceremonial handshake with Bautista Agut. Then he packed up his bag, finished up his on-court interviews, held a brief press conference and rushed to meet with his medical team to see if he could play his semifinal match, which was scheduled to begin just over two hours later against No. 2 in the world Rafael Nadal.

The Frenchman had come to Montreal nursing a left-ankle injury he had originally suffered in the lead up to Wimbledon, one that forced him to retire in the fifth set of his first match at the All England Club. It had also sidelined him from tournament play through the rest of July.

Ailing, Monfils, ranked 20th in the world, had resumed practising just three days before the Rogers Cup and found a way to gut his way into the quarterfinals at less than 100 per cent.

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First, he took down Belarus’s Ilya Ivashka 6-3, 7-6 (6). Then, on Thursday, he bested Poland’s Hubert Hurkacz 6-4, 6-0.

It was in the fourth game of the second set of his match against Bautista Agut that Monfils ran down a ball on his backhand side and came up limping.

“I felt good,” he said afterwards. “But at 6-4, 2-1 I had a pain moving backwards, and my ankle that was already painful, I hurt it again.”

Monfils toughed it out and held out hope he could give Nadal a match later on, but it wasn’t meant to be.

“I’m sorry,” Monfils told a packed crowd at IGA Stadium, just moments after conceding to Nadal in the players’ lounge.

It was an unfortunate outcome for the 32-year-old. He had intended to use this tournament as a tune-up three-to-five-set matches at the U.S. Open in two weeks. Playing twice in the same day, and in grueling matches against a pair of Spaniards at the height of their abilities, would have helped him build the stamina he was looking for.

Instead, Monfils chose not to risk further injury.

“It’s the first tournament since my comeback, and I have to take into account I was going to play against Rafa,” he said. “Against Rafa you have to be 100 per cent, it’s always difficult that way. If you’re not 100 per cent physically, and I’m not because I’m injured, and because I played two and a half hours (ago), so it becomes difficult.”

As a result, Monfils is leaving Montreal with his participation at Flushing Meadows in doubt. He’s hoping to play in Cincinnati next week, but making it through will certainly put his ankle to the test ahead of the year’s final Grand Slam tournament.

Meanwhile, Monfils’s concession on Saturday gifted the 33-year-old Nadal a place in the finals, a chance to successfully defend a hard-court title for the first time in his career and a crack at earning his fifth Rogers Cup title.

It’ll be anything but a cakewalk for the 18-time Grand Slam champion.

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His opponent, 23-year-old and world No. 9 Daniil Medvedev, has played brilliantly this week. The Russian, who won the Sofia Open in Bulgaria back in February, came into Saturday’s action having lost just 13 games in six sets in Montreal. He destroyed world no. 4 Dominic Thiem by a score of 6-3, 6-1 on Friday, and then it took him just under 84 minutes on Saturday to dispose of world No. 8 Karen Khachanov 6-1, 7-6 (6).

The match, which Medvedev mostly dominated, fell slightly short of expectations after the thriller Monfils and Bautista Agut offered. Medvedev and Khachanov wouldn’t have had to have followed those two had it not been for lightning pushing the Monfils-Bautista Agut match from Friday to Saturday.

A rain delay on Saturday also backed that last quarterfinal match up from 1:00 p.m. to 3:30 p.m.

It was a day that tested the patience of the players and the fans alike. But a day that featured magnificent tennis, particularly highlighted by Monfils’s courageous performance.

He’s making his exit with his head held high.

“I was happy that I fought, no matter what,” Monfils said. “As I say, I felt good this week, tried to give my best. I think I showed today also that I was a fighter. Now I hope it’s not that bad. Honestly, I don’t know.”

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