Novak Djokovic is one of the leading lights in action who will actually play today given the rain at the Olympic Games and he has concluded his tie against Matt Ebden, a doubles specialist with no issue and consummate ease in Paris.
Djokovic has done his bit in attempting to set up the blockbuster tie against Rafael Nadal in the second round. The latter is set likely to play tomorrow schedule pending due to the likelihood of a lot of matches being rained off.
Nadal is set to play doubles shortly with Carlos Alcaraz who is currently on court and not having it all his own way but seems on course to victory and joining Djokovic in the second round. While for the top seed, it was a 6-0, 6-1 success with Ebden only having any joy in the latter half of the match sealing a game and having game points to prolong the tie further before Djokovic managed to turn it around successfully to seal the win.
At one point, Ebden who doesn’t even have a singles ranking asked a member of the crowd jokingly if they’d take his place as he was getting routed by the 24-time Grand Slam champion. The Aussie has Andy Murray, Holger Rune among others to thank for even playing.
With the Olympic Games rules, he had to play as the alternates are all doubles stars with no qualifying at all so there is no lucky losers. So Ebden and also former singles star Robin Haase who hasn’t played in many years were called up. The Aussie had joked about having to play Djokovic beforehand and his jokes turned into a bit of a nightmare.
Albeit little was expected of him coming in and Djokovic stuck to the script in roundly routing him to move through.