We were discussing some of the finer aspects of Frances Tiafoe’s game when we got the word that a member of our informal Maury Wills Athletic & Social Club, aka the East Side Racquets, which meets on the courts near Howard University at sunrise, had been hit by a car while biking. The first thought was is she okay. A small dynamic wisp of a girl, lot of hustle running after the difficult shots.

It took a few stunned moments to get to the next question which was where in Washington do you get hit by a car at six o’clock on a Sunday morning? Is the administrative state so manic it cannot even give us our Sundays? Who would be driving recklessly down Georgia Avenue if not a federal busybody?

“Was she on her way to the courts or to church?” It was a normal question, these are righteous decent people in our organization; but unless she was on some service detail it would be early in the day to crash.

“No, it must have been yesterday. She’d be in no condition to send a message now, and she says she’s recovering.”

Quite a few bikes in Washington, where I am forced to confess I still live, and if you ask the average authority he will tell you there are about 500 serious accidents per year, usually but not always the other guy’s fault, depending who you are talking to.

Me personally, I’ve been hit twice that I can clearly remember and I’ve fallen on slippery pavement, but that’s on me. What we heard, she got hit by a lout flouting her right of way and went over the vehicle, breaking the windshield. Someone upstairs was watching, because she did not go through the damn thing — cut an artery on the way in, it’s curtains — but landed on the side of the car with a couple of fractures, including the ankle.

Someone had just mentioned Zverev’s ankle — Sasha Zverev, champ at the Washington Open (aka Citi Open) as well as several Masters 1000s but no majors yet — because he broke it last year at the French in the semis against Rafa Nadal and was out the rest of the year. He is coming on strong again, and this was a mighty Tiafoe — semifinalist at the U.S. Open last year — he was up against. Four sets, including a dramatic fight in the fourth that he took away from a fiery Big ’foe (as the hero of Hyattsville is called).

These major, or Slam, circuit matches with wildly unbalanced sets can go either way and often do. In the first round, France’s acrobatic Gael Monfils (another former Washington Open champ), held off a young Argentine, Sebastian Baez, despite leg cramps, and won in five, most improbably. But he had to drop out of the tournament with a damaged wrist. Meanwhile his sweetheart and wife, Elena Svitolina, is through to the quarters.

Nadal went on to win the tournament after Zverev’s accident, but he had broken a rib at Indian Wells a few weeks earlier. Well into his 30s and less quick to return to full strength, he opted out of Paris this year, and announced next year would be the swan song.

Roland Garros is not the same without Rafa Nadal, but it was not the same without Bjorn Borg and before him it was not the same without René Lacoste and Suzanne Lenglen. There is always a void when the great ones retire, quickly filled by new stars. Just the other day the main attraction was the match between a 16-year old prodigy from Russia named Mirra Andreeva and a 19-year old prodigy from Atlanta. The latter is one of America’s main hopes for the coming years, Coco Gauff. She is also in the doubles with another American hope, Buffalo’s Jessica Pegula, who played poorly in the singles draw due to feeling lousy from the local food, she said. It’s possible. French food can be rich. She may win the doubles yet, teaming with Miss Gauff.

At any rate, without Nadal the French Open is wide Open, although of the ladies’ side the defending champion has a pretty good shot at a repeat. Warsaw’s own Iga Świątek has been tearing up the clay in Paris, bagel (a set won without conceding a single game) after bagel. The other day she won two against a tall Chinese girl, which might qualify as comparable to a perfect baseball game, or at least a no-hitter. Well, it looks like she might meet Miss Gauff in the quarters, while her rival Aryna Sabalenka, who had a close call in her win over another American star, Sloane Stephens — who rallied magnificently from a 0-5 deficit in the first set before going down before the Belorusian peach — goes up against Miss Svitolina (Mrs. Monfils).

Will there be a handshake after that match? The Ukrainian women, including Elena Svitolina, have been refusing the traditional post-match handshake with Russians and White Russians. ’Tis but a gesture, but they believe they must make it. You have to understand they are carrying Ukraine’s hopes. The male Ukrainians on the tennis tour all are on the eastern front.

However, it is not clear why the tennis establishment allows Russians to play in tournaments but not under their country’s colors. They appear as stateless athletes. The idea seems to be, pre-empt Russian propaganda in case they win. “We crush Kiev nazis and we win tennis tournaments,” sure. This position is no smarter than was Avery Brundage’s, back in the day when he apologized to Hitler for allowing the likes of Jesse Owens and Marty Glickman and many others of the wrong races to compete in the 1936 Berlin Olympics.

Nor is the attitude of the tennis press smart. Miss Sabalenka was so distraught at being hounded by media types who wanted her to come out and say the right thing — by their lights — about the war in the east that she asked to be excused from the normally obligatory post-match press conferences (which, mind, is another weird infringement on the players’ dignity: why should they be forced to talk to air-heads in the media?).

At least here they acknowledged her feelings and let her take a pass. Then they had to apologize for allowing Novak Djokovic — the best active player in the world — for scribbling a “Kosovo in my heart” on the camera, after winning an early round. These messages usually are on the order of “Love you Paris” or “Kisses to all my New York fans” or “Thanks Mom!” but they can be whatever a player has on his mind, no? This was an allegedly “political” statement and therefore a no-no. Players are supposed to be either stupid about the world around them or to express only acceptable opinions?

Well, as someone noted, we’ll always have Paris. I am sorry I am not there to send my readers postcards, but maybe next year. In the meantime, the East Side Racquets wish our ankle-hurt friend a quick recovery and return to dawn tennis, and we hope Mayor Muriel Bowser will ban cars from Washington’s congested streets.