Greetings from Paris, where I’ve been reading with amusement the fretting over the Golden State Warriors, who have provoked an existential crisis in basketball with an “overly dominant” team which has won three out of the last four NBA titles.
Three out of four titles. That’s adorable. The magic horsey won three big horsey races in a row? Way to go, horsey!!!.
Because Rafael Nadal won his 11th French Open Sunday.
I know, I know: different sport, different circumstances, shorter tournament, funky surface, no Kevin Durant. And he didn’t have to win the Preakness.
But still: if we’re going to talk about dominance in modern sports, the conversation must include Nadal, who has turned winning this majestic clay-court tournament into less of an accomplishment than an annual rite.
The 32-year-old Spaniard is almost always the last man standing at Roland Garros. In his career, Nadal has entered the men’s singles tournament here 14 times—winning 11, losing twice, and withdrawing with injury once. In total, he is 86-2 here.
86-2! Put that in your Steph Curry fan blog.
Sunday’s 6-4, 6-3, 6-2 defeat of Austria’s Dominic Thiem gives Nadal a total of 17 victories in tennis’s four major tournaments. (I tend to write “Slams,” but I always worry about offending Bud Collins up in Tennis Heaven—the late Collins insisted “Grand Slam” applied only to winning four majors in a calendar year.) Nadal’s total is second only to Roger Federer’s 20, with both men poised to hit the grass at Wimbledon next month.
The great geezer renaissance in men’s tennis continues apace. For the past 18 months, Nadal and the 36-year-old Federer have been alternating major titles, like a tennis version of Lemmon and Matthau, or a classic rock twin bill. The men’s game hasn’t had an under-30 Slam winner (sorry, Bud!) since Andy Murray won Wimbledon in 2016 at the precocious age of…29.
Rafa, meanwhile, is making 32 look like the new 22. Could he keep cranking out Roland Garros titles deep into his late 30s? Not long ago, it seemed crazy, given Nadal’s wildly physical style of play, and the havoc it was playing on his body.
It feels less crazy today.
“I can’t describe my feelings, because it’s not even a dream,” he said Sunday after his triumph. “Eleven times, it is impossible to think.”
He makes it look easy here, which is unfair, because it’s terribly hard to win a tennis major—just ask the 20-millennial pileup of young talent still trying to break through. It’s also funny, because nothing about Nadal’s playing style is easy—not his Zorro-like, open-stance forehand, which makes traditionalists hide their eyes; not his backhand, which is a monster truck compared to a balletic one-hander; not his bespoke flurry of grunts, towelings, picks and tics. Nadal can’t be imitated because he’s so thoroughly a tennis one-off. On the clay, he parks so far behind the baseline, he’s basically in Poland. His endurance is unparalleled. The spinning on his strokes is absurd.
And yet, when it comes down to it, what makes Nadal Nadal is that he is one of the most doggedly competitive people in all of sports. Nadal doesn’t take a point off. There is no slack in his game. Ever. He’s fully committed, fighting to the end. Playing him, especially here, is like getting chased down the hallway with a chainsaw…for roughly three hours.
This is what you’re up against, if you’re Thiem. The talented 24-year-old Austrian has been billed as a Next Gen hope—“one of the players the Tour needs,” Nadal called him—and he’d beaten Nadal on clay earlier in the season, in Madrid. He hung around for much of the first set, beating back a 12-minute Nadal break attempt, but by the match’s second hour, it was clear he didn’t have enough. Thiem pluckily saved four match points in the third set, but it was a mere postponement of the inevitable.
Losing to Nadal here is no shame, of course. As a Rafa runner up in Paris, Thiem is in fine company: Federer (four times), Novak Djokovic (twice), Wawrinka (last year), among others.
Win a bar bet! Who are the two players to beat Nadal in Paris? Robin Söderling (2009) and Djokovic (2015). Now go buy yourself an Aperol spritz.
Sunday’s final was the last go-round for one of the grand relics of tennis, Roland Garros’s Court Philippe Chatrier, which will undergo a modernization in the off-season, and, eventually, add a roof. Roland roadies began to take the place apart this weekend, and there’s some hand-wringing about what it all means—if sprucing up Chatrier’s old concrete and cutting away its elegant vines will irreparably change the place. Lights and nighttime play are also coming, which will boost revenue, but the worry is the French Open will start to look like every other tournament.
I think Roland Garros will be fine—a lot of care is going into this renovation. Still, it’s fitting that a once-in-a-lifetime champion like Nadal closed the old joint—or at least the memory of what the old joint was. Sunday was an end, or the first phase of a new beginning. What Rafael Nadal has done here, however, is forever.
Write to Jason Gay at Jason.Gay@wsj.com
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