Pablo Carreno Busta: Preparing for an unusual French Open - The Players' Voice

Until now everything has been normal, we got to the airport, we were picked up, came to the hotel and got the test done, we’re waiting for the results, they’ve told us that it will take around 24 hours. Meanwhile I’m locked in my room.

There have been plenty of changes at the event. Changing the date of the tournament affects the weather and the court, I guess the conditions will be much heavier, we’ll be expecting rain as well and lights will be important too because the dark will end matches much sooner. The rain will play a role too since it can delay matches and means you have less resting time, which is a very important thing in five-set matches.

I don’t think that it was the right decision to play the US Open because I got to the semi-finals, I think that it was the right one because the organisation of the tournament took the ‘bubble’ really seriously. They tried to make everything as simple as possible for the players and I think that the safety conditions of the tournament was fantastic.

Right now, the change of surface had to be really fast, the result in Rome was not as expected, but it is true that the first round against Rafa was really tough and we almost didn’t have time to prepare the match.

To me it was a victory, winning in the quarter-finals. I was playing my match, the result was 6-5 and it was on my serve [when Djokovic struck a line judge with a ball].

It was a weird moment, a tough one that doesn’t usually happen, he had bad luck as well.

It is normal that when Roger, Rafa and Novak start to lose performance, new players will appear. These three players are three of the best in the history of this sport and all of them have coincided in the same period of time, which means that winning tournaments for the rest of us has become really difficult.

I’m sure that the Next Gen will become stronger with Medvedev, Zverev, Shapovalov… players that are already near the top and if any of the Big Three lose focus, these young guns will start winning Grand Slams as well.

I hope that my quarantine will be just 24 hours and then I’ll be able to go to the gym, to go downstairs to have dinner and get on court to train, because being alone for 24 hours in my room is hard! I’ve got some books, I’m watching series, talking to my friends and family, to my coach who is in another room. We were quarantined in the US, in Rome and here, so we’re going to get used to being in our rooms!

Right now I’m watching the Pablo Escobar series, the Colombian one, ‘El Patrón del Mal’, which I watched some time ago but my coach started to watch it in the States and since we had so much free time, I decided to start to watch it again. It is great to learn about these things that have happened in life and know more about the history.