What for Tallon Griekspoor should have been the most beautiful match of his life on Monday, ended in a drama. He got injured to an abdominal muscle during the warm-up for his first fourth-round match at a Grand Slam tournament and had to give up after 54 minutes. This is how his day went.
Mother and father Griekspoor step into the car from Nieuw-Vennep to Paris on Monday morning, suspecting nothing. In the French capital, their son is preparing for perhaps the match of his life. He will meet world-class player Alexander Zverev at Roland Garros. They don’t want to miss that.
“I’m not too nervous,” says mother Griekspoor when she enters the players’ box on Court Suzanne-Lenglen around 12:45 PM. “Have fun and good luck,” she wishes the Dutch press.
As soon as Griekspoor enters the court around 1:00 PM, the Griekspoor family stands up. His brothers Scott and Kevin and the Russian tennis star Anastasia Potapova are also present. “Come on Tallon,” shouts Scott, who is the occasional coach of his younger brother this tournament.
The world number 35 waves to his family, and a big smile appears on his face. Griekspoor looks fit and ready for his first eighth-final match at a Grand Slam. But appearances are deceiving.
Large white plaster on Griekspoor’s left abdominal muscle
A few hours earlier, at 9:45 AM, Griekspoor starts his warm-up. The Roland Garros tennis park is not yet open. The Dutchman has half an hour and concludes the warm-up as usual with serving.
The service is normally his weapon, but now turns out to be his biggest enemy. A few minutes before Griekspoor has to leave the gravel, things go wrong with one of his last serves.
Griekspoor grabs his left abdominal muscle and immediately feels that something is not right. Together with his team, the Dutchman decides to have an echo made two hours after the moment of shock.
At that time, nothing worrying can be seen on the scan. Griekspoor decides not to withdraw and starts the match of his life at 1:10 PM with a large white plaster on his stomach.
‘Was a hopeless mission after the first game’
Remarkably, Griekspoor is leading 3-0 after a strong service and two smart dropshots, but that score turns out to give a distorted picture of reality. He loses the first set 6-4.
With a 3-0 deficit in the second set, Griekspoor stops the battle after 54 minutes and shakes Zverev’s hand dejectedly. The match of his life turned out to be a lost battle before the start.
“After that first game, I already knew that this would be a hopeless mission,” says Griekspoor somewhat dejectedly in a full press room. “I got those first points purely through adrenaline and painkillers. You want to give this match a chance, but that didn’t work today.”
Griekspoor knows that he has to serve his best to beat Zverev. But after each service, the speed of his strokes decreased. “At one point, I hit a service of 150 kilometers per hour. Then you know it’s over.”
Zverev also realized that something was wrong. “I saw that he was not reaching his usual speed with the service,” says the German. “Normally that is his strong weapon.”
‘Mentally, emotionally and physically heavy’
What makes it even more painful is that Griekspoor felt fitter than ever during the tournament in Paris. “That it goes wrong now is mentally, emotionally and physically heavy. Especially because I have never been in a second week of a Grand Slam.”
But the Dutchman also knows that it is bad luck. “This is something that shoots in acutely. There is nothing of which I now say: I should have done this better in the past days. I have not left anything behind in my recovery.”
Griekspoor is very disappointed that he has not been able to make a fight of it, but also fears for his grass season. The tennis player from Nieuw-Vennep would love to participate in ‘his’ Libéma Open in a week, the Dutch grass tournament that he won in 2023.
“But I don’t know if that will work,” says Griekspoor, who will further investigate what exactly is going on in the Netherlands on Tuesday. “That pain in my stomach really doesn’t feel good. I am glad that I have made this wise decision.”
The short trip to Roland Garros also has a bitter aftertaste for Griekspoor’s parents. The couple drove 508 kilometers to Paris for 54 minutes of tennis. “Then we’ll just have a beer on the terrace,” concludes father Griekspoor.