It would have been difficult for Rafael Nadal to have a clearer view of his last Olympic draw.

The Spanish superstar, now 38 years old, was in the front row on Thursday at the Club des Loges at Roland Garros stadium: directly facing the screen where the men’s singles draw for Paris 2024 was revealed.

His telltale left eyebrow arched slightly as the top quarter appeared, and there was soon a big buzz in the room as others realised that Nadal and Novak Djokovic were on a familiar path: A collision course.

Their rivalry has endured for 18 years, and they have faced each other 59 times: a record for men’s singles in the Open era.

Number 60 could come next week in the second round of the Olympics.

“We’ll have to see,” said Nadal, who is facing fresh injury concerns, in an interview with Eurosport. “You can’t focus on things that might happen.

Djokovic was more open to projection.

“I am excited for this duel,” he said at a Team Serbia news conference on Thursday. “And I will give it my all.”

There are no guarantees of course, but aging bodies willing, the match-up does look likely. Djokovic, the top men’s seed after the withdrawal of No. 1 Jannik Sinner, will face Matthew Ebden of Australia in the opening round. Ebden, a 36-year-old doubles specialist these days, no longer has a singles ranking and only made it into the Olympic singles tournament as an alternate because of very late withdrawals. Ebden made it clear how he felt about the match-up, posting a video on Instagram to the tune of “Mission Impossible”.

Nadal’s opening-round task looks more arduous than Djokovic’s but hardly out of reach if Nadal is healthy. His opponent is Marton Fucsovics, a Hungarian veteran who won the Romanian Open on clay in April but who has had a rough season in general, slipping to No. 83 in the rankings.

“He’s a good player, he always competes very well,” Nadal said. “We will see. I hope to be prepared to play well.”

It is remarkable given their advanced tennis ages that Djokovic has never faced Ebden in singles on tour, just as Nadal has never faced the 32-year-old Fucsovics.

Nadal is well below the Hungarian in the current rankings at No. 161 but remains the most successful men’s clay-court player in history, a forehand-whipping force of nature who has won Roland Garros a mind-bending 14 times. Now he is back in the familiar stadium that has become, for the first time, an Olympic stadium.

“To play in the Olympics is completely different than any other tournament,” Nadal said on Thursday. “That it is at Roland Garros is only a detail for me. Obviously, I have felt very comfortable all my life playing here and it’s the most important place in my sporting career. I’m not experiencing it like a Roland Garros but as an Olympics.”

There are major differences. Grand Slam men’s singles matches are best-of-five sets. Olympic singles matches are best-of-three, and though the longer format has certainly helped Nadal find solutions to most problems on red clay through the years, the shorter format could serve him better this time.

The Olympic tennis schedule is packed into just nine days of competition, and Nadal is also playing doubles with Carlos Alcaraz. Their opening match is tricky and will come against Maximo Gonzalez and Andres Molteni, doubles specialists from Argentina who are seeded No. 6.

Nadal is in the home stretch of his career yet still working his way back after hip surgery and other injuries. He lost in the first round of the French Open in May to Alexander Zverev and skipped Wimbledon in part to minimize the risk of injury that could come with a surface change to grass.

He has continued to train on clay and returned to action last week in Bastad, Sweden: battling his way through a series of tight matches before losing the final to Nuno Borges 6-3, 6-2.

Nadal looked spent and uncharacteristically off target in that match – his first tour final in more than two years – but it was a week of undeniable progress. It was also a grueling week, and the question, as ever at this stage, is how his body will hold up. He did not take part in two scheduled practice sessions at Roland Garros on Thursday and was wearing a wrap on his upper right leg during practice on Wednesday.

“It was a setback and we decided that today Rafa would rest and not train so he could recover,” Carlos Moya, one of Nadal’s coaches, told Onda Cero, a Spanish radio. “We are going to give ourselves 48 hours. We have to wait.”

Nadal was not asked about the injury at the draw.

“My goal is to be prepared to give my maximum and then we will see what happens,” he said. “You cannot predict how you are going to be, how you are going to feel on the court. But I’m trying to make things go well. In life in general but especially in sports, there’s always those who win and others who lose.”

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by ITF Tennis (@itftennis)

Nadal and Djokovic have certainly struck quite a balance in their duels. Djokovic leads the head-to-head by the smallest possible margin with a 30-29 advantage.

They have not played since the 2022 French Open, where Nadal defeated Djokovic in four sets on his way to the title. If they do play again next week in Paris, it will be their earliest meeting in any straight knockout tournament (they have faced off in round-robin matches at the ATP Finals).

“He has been the greatest rival that I ever had,” Djokovic said recently. “Matches against him on clay have frustrated me so much in my career, but they also made me a better player, made me understand what it takes, you know, really to try to surpass him, try to win at least once or twice at Roland Garros.”

Djokovic has managed to win three French Opens: quite an achievement given Nadal’s dominance on the surface. Djokovic is also the only man to have beaten Nadal more than once at Roland Garros, defeating him in the 2015 quarterfinals and 2021 semi-finals.

But Nadal has built a surely insurmountable lead through the years on clay, winning 20 of their 28 singles matches on the surface.

Given their advancing ages, this could be their last official match anywhere. And given the circumstances, the 37-year-old Djokovic would seem to have more to lose than Nadal.

Djokovic has won all of the most prestigious prizes in tennis except one: an Olympic gold medal. Nadal already has two. He won the singles gold in 2008 in Beijing, defeating Djokovic in a rugged three-set semifinal that is, for now, their only Olympic meeting. Nadal then won the doubles gold in 2016 in Rio de Janeiro with Marc Lopez.

While Nadal shed tears of joy in Rio, Djokovic shed tears of disappointment after losing to Juan Martin del Potro in the opening round. Five years later in Tokyo, Djokovic was beaten by Zverev in the semi-finals and then lost the bronze-medal match to Pablo Carreño Busta.

The Olympic gold medal has remained remarkably elusive.

“That’s definitely one of the biggest dreams,” Djokovic said. “Approaching the Olympic Games is always a huge challenge for me, because I have put extra expectations and pressure on myself, and of course the nation as well. The expectations are always high, which is something that I cannot change and do not want to. But I will approach this with maximum effort.”

He reached the final of Wimbledon this month, losing a lopsided match to Alcaraz just a few weeks after minor knee surgery. Djokovic is still wearing a gray sleeve on his right knee during training, but unlike Nadal, he is only entered in the singles in Paris.

“This year, we haven’t had time to prepare properly, because the tennis calendar was very busy,” Djokovic said. “I played Wimbledon, because it’s the most important tournament in our sport, and it is also a softer surface, so it gave me time to adapt with the injury on my knee.  I also hadn’t had proper preparation before Wimbledon, but in the last four or five days I have felt more ready for the Olympic Games than I did for Wimbledon. All I can focus on is my preparations physically and mentally, and the rest is in God’s hands.”

Nadal’s hands may play a role, as well, if their second-round duel becomes reality. If it happens, it will be the talk of the tournament and the Olympic village.