Roland Garros Final: The Superiority of the Long-Distance Rafa

When his body is accomodating, Rafael Nadal is tennis' equivalent of a record-shattering long-distance runner. If a player seeks to go the long way around him to achieve a win, their chances are slim. If they try to do it on clay, they're even less. At Roland Garros? The chances keep getting smaller.

So why did some think that the Spaniard might be challenged today in the Roland Garros final against Robin Soderling?

Well, surprisingly, there WAS reason to believe. Or at least the mirage proved tempting. After all, the hard-hitting Swede HAD defeated Nadal in Paris a year ago, making him the only man in Nadal's previous thirty-eight career RG matches who'd ever managed to defeat him. Soderling defeated defending champion Roger Federer in the quarterfinals earlier this week, too, ending his record of twenty-three straight appearances in slam semifinals. Even John McEnroe, while picking Nadal to win, had thought the match would go five sets.

Like I said, though, Nadal's "vulnerability" was just a figment of everyone's imagination.

Of course, Soderling DID have a few chances to possibly make a match of this men's final, but his inability to grab any advantage when it presented itself only served to make his chances tinier and tinier until they entirely disappeared from existence. In the 1st set, he had a break point on Nadal's serve in the fourth game, then two more in game #7. In the 2nd set, he had four in game #2 alone (the third of which the Spaniard turned away by playing miraculous defense, wrestling control of the point away from the Swede, then winning the point with a volley winner). Nadal held in that game, then turned his position deep in the backcourt, seemingly out of the point, into an honest-to-goodness winner when he stretched as far as he could and still managed to hit a backhand crosscourt winner to get to triple break point on Soderling's serve. He broke him at love for 3-2, and never lost another game in the set.

Trailing two sets to none, Soderling, already down a break at 1-0, got one final chance to get something resembling a foothold in the match. He had yet another break point in game #2, but failed to convert. He wouldn't get another. Nadal won 6-4/6-2/6-4, and when a Soderling backhand landed helplessly in the net, the Spaniard slid into the baseline on his back, then did a double-fisted clench in celebration of his seventh career slam title.

After shaking hands at the net, Nadal fell to his back on the terre battue once again, officially ending a year of discontent that not only had included the RG loss to Soderling, but also not being able to defend his Wimbledon title, seeing his ranking dropping outside the Top 2, his parents split up and his career's future be questioned due to his lingering knee issues.

Nadal's straight sets win today means he's won Roland Garros twice without dropping a set in the last three years. Only Bjorn Borg has achieved the feat more than once, doing so three times (twice in Paris). His fifth Roland Garros crown leaves Rafa behind only Borg (who turned 54 today) for Open Era championships at the French. Oh, and he's back at #1 in the rankings, too.

What happened in Paris and the EuroClay season that preceded it served to remind us that when Nadal is himself, of sound mindset and body, he's fairly well impossible to defeat on the red stuff at this point in his career. If he isn't already the "best claycourter ever," then he might be less than two years (and one more RG title than Borg) from making it "official."

But what comes next?

After the match, Nadal told McEnroe that he'd "see (him) at the U.S. Open," hardly hiding his goal for the upcoming summer season. Already a hard court slam winner in Melbourne, Nadal's hard-driving style has usually left him somewhat broken and worn by the time things wrap up in New York. After a less-heavy clay schedule in '10, though, might he finally play out the North American hardcourt circuit at full power for the first time this year? If so, this summer could be historic.

The last person to complete a sweep of the championships at Roland Garros, Wimbledon and the U.S. Open in the same year was Rod Laver during his second Grand Slam season of 1969. Borg never did it. Neither has Federer. Could Rafa? If his knees stay intact through early September, why not?

Stay tuned. After all, we are talking about the best "long-distance runner" in the game.



*THE RELEVANT NUMBERS*

> Soderling was 0-for-8 on break points (Nadal was 4-of-12), and committed 45 unforced errors (to Nadal's 16).

>> Nadal has now won twenty-four consecutive matches on clay. He already holds the all-time record with an 81-match streak from 2005-07. Second place is Guillermo Vilas' 53 in 1977. Nadal could be bearing down on moving into second place behind himself by this time in 2011.

>>> The Nadal/Federer combo has started a new streak, with Rafa's title meaning they've won back-to-back slams. The pair shared eleven consecutive (Federer-8, Nadal-3) from 2005-07. They've claimed the crown at nineteen of the last twenty-one slams dating back to Roland Garros '05, and twenty-one of twenty-four since Wimbledon '04.

>>>>Want a ridiculous stat? Well, when Nadal wins the 1st set of a match on clay, he is now 185-4. In grand slams, he's 95-1. From 2006-10, he's a combined 117-1.

>>>>> As Nadal moves back to #1 in the rankings on Monday it intriguingly stalls out Roger Federer at just one week away from tying Pete Sampras' all-time mark of 286 total weeks at #1. With Nadal having missed Wimbledon in '09, which Federer won, there would seem to be little chance for Federer to reclaim the position anytime soon. Hmmm, what if he never gets it's back? Seriously, what are the odds that he'll end his career a few years from now and STILL be a single week from that record?



*ATP SLAM TITLES - ACTIVE*
16...Roger Federer
7...RAFAEL NADAL
2...Lleyton Hewitt
1...Juan Martin del Potro
1...Novak Djokovic
1...Juan Carlos Ferrero
1...Gaston Gaudio
1...Andy Roddick

*MOST ATP SLAM FINALS - ACTIVE*
22...Roger Federer (16-6)
9...RAFAEL NADAL (7-2)
5...Andy Roddick (1-4)
4...Lleyton Hewitt (2-2)
3...Juan Carlos Ferrero (1-2)
2...Novak Djokovic (1-1)
2...Andy Murray (0-2)
2...ROBIN SODERLING (0-2)

*CAREER SLAM TITLES - ACTIVE*
[singles + doubles + mixed]
16...Roger Federer
15...Bob Bryan
13...Leander Paes
11...Mahesh Bhupathi
11...Mike Bryan
7...RAFAEL NADAL
7...Max Mirnyi
7...NENAD ZIMONJIC
6...DANIEL NESTOR

*WON SLAM WITHOUT LOSING A SET - OPEN ERA*
1971 Ken Rosewall (Australian Open)
1973 Ilie Nastase (Roland Garros)
1976 Bjorn Borg (Wimbledon)
1978 Bjorn Borg (Roland Garros)
1980 Bjorn Borg (Roland Garros)
2007 Roger Federer (Australian Open)
2008 Rafael Nadal (Roland Garros)
2010 Rafael Nadal (Roland Garros)

*ROLAND GARROS TITLES*
[Open Era]
6...Bjorn Borg, SWE (1974-75, 1978-81)
5...RAFAEL NADAL, ESP (2005-08, 2010)
3...Gustavo Kuerten, BRA (1997, 2000-01)
3...Ivan Lendl, CZE (1984, 1986-87)
3...Mats Wilander, SWE (1982, 1985, 1988)
[All-Time]
8...Max Decugis (1903-04, 1907-09, 1912-14)
6...Bjorn Borg
5...RAFAEL NADAL
5...Henri Cochet (1922, 1926, 1928, 1930, 1932)
5...A.Vacherot (1894-96, 1901-02)

*ATP SLAM TITLES - CAREER*
16...Roger Federer *
14...Pete Sampras
12...Roy Emerson
11...Bjorn Borg
11...Rod Laver
10...Bill Tilden
8...Andre Agassi
8...Jimmy Connors
8...Ivan Lendl
8...Fred Perry
8...Ken Rosewall
7...Henri Cochet
7...Rene Lacoste
7...Bill Larned
7...John McEnroe
7...RAFAEL NADAL *
7...John Newcombe
7...William Renshaw
7...Richard Sears
7...Mats Wilander
-
* - active

*ATP WEEKS AT #1 - as of June 7*
286...Pete Sampras
285...Roger Federer *
270...Ivan Lendl
268...Jimmy Connors
170...John McEnroe
109...Bjorn Borg
101...Andre Agassi
80...Lleyton Hewitt *
72...Stefan Edberg
58...Jim Courier
46...RAFAEL NADAL *
43...Gustavo Kuerten
40...Ilie Nastase
20...Mats Wilander
13...Andy Roddick *
12...Boris Becker
9...Marat Safin
8...Juan Carlos Ferrero
8...John Newcombe
6...Yevgeny Kafelnikov
6...Thomas Muster
6...Marcelo Rios
2...Carlos Moya
1...Patrick Rafter
-
* - active





All for now.

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