Monday, October 12, 2020

Rafa Nadal, The Undisputed King Of Clay

 It's not like there was any doubt. Rafa Nadal has achieved so much on clay courts in his career that the King of Clay title had been firmly his for many years now. What is mind-blowing is how he continues to add on to the records that are already his.

Yesterday, Rafa Nadal won the French Open, which was played in September-October instead of the usual May-June because of the global Covid pandemic. In the final, he played against Novak Djokovic, the world #1 who has been Rafa's nemesis over the last decade. Novak had in fact beaten Rafa in 14 of their last 18 matches. A win for Novak would have been extraordinarily significant, because he would have remained undefeated in 2020, he would have won his 18th Grand Slam title, and he would have been the only player in the Open era to have won each major at least twice.

Unfortunately, Rafa reminded the world yet again why Roland Garros is his house. He defeated Novak  6-0, 6-2, 7-5 in the final. How significant was this?

  • It is his 13th French Open title. No one else in the Open era has won a single tournament that many times.
  • It is his 20th Grand Slam title, tying him with Roger Federer for the most Grand Slam singles titles won by a man.
  • It is his 100th match win at Roland Garros. He only has two losses so far in his entire career.
  • He didn't drop a set the entire tournament. This is the fourth time he has achieved this at the French Open.
  • He has now won at least four consecutive titles in Roland Garros three times: 2005-2008, 2010-2014 (this was five in a row), and now 2017-2020
  • He has not lost in a final at the French Open. In fact, he has not lost in a semifinal here either.

These records are just absolutely astounding. Winning 13 titles is most likely a record that will never be broken (or at least not in my lifetime).

On the women's side, we have a new star in Iga Swiatek, who announced her arrival by sweeping past all her opponents en route to the French Open title. Not only did she do so without dropping a set, she didn't lost more than five games in any of her matches. Iga was unseeded but she did win the Wimbledon Juniors event in 2018 so it's not like she came out of nowhere. Also, her road to the championship was definitely not easy since she had to get through top seed Simona Halep in the fourth round and she faced fourth seed Sofia Kenin in the final. Congrats Iga!

2020 has not been a good year by any stretch of the imagination but I'm just happy that we still got some Grand Slam tennis. I think I may have become a bit of a fan of Iga Swiatek after seeing her inspiring run to the title but it was really Rafa Nadal's sheer and utter dominance of Roland Garros that brought me the greatest joy this last weekend. Vamos Rafa! All hail the king!

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