We’re knee-deep into dirt season now, and I trust that you’ve all managed to locate the tennis ball on your monitors. (That was a problem specific to Monte Carlo, a trick of the seaside light and ill-positioned cameras.) It’s a fine time for a check-in on the past, present, and future of clay-court tennis on the ATP.

THE PAST

Technically I’m calling this the past, but I could never comfortably relegate Rafael Nadal to the past. Even if he announced a “retirement” and I needed to write about it, I’d probably wait with my thumb hovering over the “Publish” button for another 50 years just to be safe. How many times has he returned from apparent bodily ruin to regain glory? But the man himself has been talking as if the end is near, and at some point he must be taken at face value. This week Nadal competed for the first time since his January injury at Brisbane; hip and abdominal woes have kept him off court in the intervening months. Nadal returned to the tour in Barcelona, where he is a 12-time champion, and where, after stepping onto court called “Pista Rafa Nadal,” and before playing a single point, he was greeted with a standing O. After dispatching the 21-year-old Italian Flavio Cobolli in the first round, Rafa declared himself “pain-free,” a victory in itself, even if the tennis wasn’t up to his usual technical standard. Most conspicuous: He hit his serves with tender caution, and explained he’d gone months without being able to practice the motion. There was no way to soft-pedal and still win his second-round match against Alex de Minaur, who acknowledged that the “only thing I might have on Rafa on clay is physicality at this stage of his career,” and accordingly made the points as long as he could. After a tight first set, the speedy Aussie ran away with the win, 7–5, 6–1. Nadal said he was more comfortable and happier than he’d been a week and a half ago. He didn’t want to overextend himself in Barcelona, as he is instead ramping up, tournament by tournament, so that he can peak when it matters. “It wasn’t today that I had to give everything and die; I have to give myself the chance to do that in a few weeks, or at least try to,” he said after. The target is still, and always has been, Roland-Garros. For the last time? I’m never gonna type that.

THE PRESENT

Casper Ruud is sneaking up on us as always, sneaking even into major finals as if he were tiptoeing through a creaky hallway for a midnight snack of olives. But this is his moment, and he has been eating. If asked which player has the most wins this ATP season, you might have safely assumed the white-hot, red-mopped Jannik Sinner; he’s been bumped down to second place by Ruud, who has played more tournaments than Sinner and done very well at most of them, building himself a 26–7 record at time of writing. The placid Norwegian has shed the malaise of last season and inserted himself back in the top 10, and watching him on clay, hunting those huge spinny forehands, it’s easy to remember why he’s so formidable on this surface. With Nadal fading, his once heir apparent Dominic Thiem on the verge of grim retirement, and the real-deal colossal talents still coming of age, why can’t the 25-year-old Ruud mature into the clay specialist of the modern era? He should be sneaking in a title every clay swing. Sadly that old bugbear—he owns no title above the 250-level—has yet to be banished, since he lost to Stefanos Tsitsipas in last weekend’s Monte Carlo final. But some key concepts seem to be clicking for him mentally. Last week he beat Novak Djokovic for the first time in six tries. He said he headed into the match considering the fact that Djokovic had lost to the unseasoned Luca Nardi in Indian Wells, that the great champion was “human” after all. That’s progress for the placid Ruud, who could benefit from being a little less deferential. However, this week, while gushing again about Rafa, he said, “I might sound like a fanboy, but I don’t care.” No, Casper! You’re backsliding again. There will be plenty of time to fanboy in the future, but for now these are ants to be squashed in zero-sum competition. Maybe he’ll only be liberated after they’re officially retired. We try to avoid armchair psychology in these quarters. But I think Ruud might just need to be a little more…impolite.

THE FUTURE

I leave you with a brief and forceful recommendation: Don’t miss an ATP match if 17-year-old Joao Fonseca is playing in it. We last checked in on this kid in February, when he got a wild card into his first ATP tournament and made it to the quarterfinals in Rio, his home city. Since then he has received two more wild cards into ATP events; he lost both times first-round, in extremely competitive matches. But in between those losses, Fonseca made his first Challenger Tour final and pushed his ranking inside the top 300. This week he’s in Bucharest, back on the big-boy circuit, having received his fourth wild card into an ATP event. And just as in Rio, he is into the quarterfinal at a 250-level event. He beat veterans Lorenzo Sonego and Radu Albot en route, proving that he’s one of those rare players who can comfortably hit through the clay, and he will be rewarded richly for that gift once he’s done growing. I’m still thinking of this ungodly kick serve—maybe a fluky bounce off a mound of dirt, but that makes it no less fun to watch on repeat. Fonseca is one of those extraterrestrially gifted ball-strikers, already mixing it up with top-50 talent, and he still doesn’t turn 18 until late August. I’m not saying this arc will be Alcaraz-esque, but perhaps it won’t be that far off.

—A WTA tourney at The Queens Club is at the mercy of the men. 

—Sir Andge will not need surgery, and is back training again. 

—America’s coach checks in with Aussie John Millman on the Craig Shapiro Tennis Podcast. 

—A nice Defector piece on the WNBA draft.