The Reassuring Supremacy of Rafael Nadal

(The blog has laid dormant for longer than it has in its now 12-13 year existence. Covid is sure to wreak havoc on the Spring season, and there have been rumblings that there will be no Pool C this year. Without fall tennis to keep us sated, I will start this season off with some minor musings on my favorite player, and hope this leads to some more DIII tennis related content in the near future)

A lot has changed for me since 2005. Back then, I didn’t have an iPhone because it was still 2 years from its release date. I didn’t have a Facebook page because those were still restricted to those with a college e-mail account (I was more of a MySpace guy, anyways. Background song, “Dani California” by the Red Hot Chili Peppers). Netflix was a service that exchanged DVDs by mail, one that Blockbuster thought was too “niche” to spend $50M to acquire. Amazon was an online bookstore. I had shoulder-length hair and played tennis in a bandana.

I had only recently caught the tennis bug back then, and in between sessions trying to piece together my rickety backhand on cracked and dusty courts at a public middle school, my coach and I talked about tennis. I was pretty excited about fellow-teenager Rafael Nadal. The swashbuckling Mallorcan in clamdiggers was kicking the shit out of the snobbish Swiss player who had made the men’s tour his personal playground, and I was thrilled to see someone knock him off his pedestal. (I describe Nadal as swashbuckling here because tennis writers across the world used the adjective with gleeful abandon at the time for reasons that probably had less to do with his game and more to do with his pants and the recent release of Pirates of the Carribean). My coach was partial to the Swiss. I couldn’t imagine why, but I did take $5 off him when Rafa won his first Roland Garros a couple days after his 19^th birthday.

Much has changed since then, but my backhand still sucks and Rafael Nadal still reigns supreme on clay. Thirteen times in the last 16 years, I’ve had the pleasure of watching Rafa carve through all comers on the red clay in Paris. By 2010, he had already been crowned “The King of Clay,” the best clay court tennis player of all time. He’s won 8 more French Opens since then. He’s four-peated at the tournament three separate times. His record stands at an incomprehensible 100-2. With 13 French Open titles, he’s won more French Opens than all but four other men’s players have won total majors ever. (Sampras’ old record of 14 major titles now looks rather quaint with the three greatest men’s players of all time overlapping in glorious fashion over the past two decades).

As tennis fans, you already know all of this. Tennis columnists have been describing these accomplishments in breathless terms for the past decade. Every summer, they write all the same things, tacking a new title to his haul, seven more wins to his record. Scroll tennis message boards, and you’ll see the old glib sayings: “Three things in life are certain: death, taxes, and Rafael Nadal winning the French Open,” “Tennis has three surfaces: hard, grass, and Rafa.” But herein lies the true genius of Rafael Nadal. On clay, he has been so dominant, it’s boring; so invincible, it’s mundane. He has been so good that even on his worst day, he’s still better than the second-best player in the sport. This era of sports has been defined by leaps in longevity: Usain Bolt dominated the track for three Olympics, Tom Brady is still slinging it at 43 years old, and Lebron James just won his 4^th title his 17^th season. But while we marvel at those stars athletes’ ability to still compete and win, Nadal is singular in his ability to enter the French Open as the presumed champion after all this time.

16 years later, his shorts have gotten progressively shorter, his scalp has gotten conspicuously balder, but Nadal is no more beatable now than he was as the swashbuckling 19-yearold who first planted his flag in Court Phillipe-Chatrier. In a year when everything feels so messed up, including watching a French Open final played in October under a roof, seeing Nadal win the French Open was powerfully reassuring. Watching Rafa rule the clay has been the greatest joy of my life as a sports fan. Thank you, Rafa, and Long Live The King.