The King of Clay was simply at it again on Sunday. Rafael Nadal of Mallorca, Spain won his 13th French Open title as he clobbered the number one ranked player in the world, Novak Djokovic of Serbia 6-0, 6-2, 7-5.
The match simply was not even close. Nadal won easily in under three hours and strengthened the argument that he is the greatest tennis player on clay that the world has ever seen.
Where Nadal dominated Djokovic the most was on Djokovic’s serve. Nadal broke Djokovic seven times and had 18 break point opportunities overall. Djokovic did find a way to break Nadal in the third set when Nadal was up a break. However, Nadal once again broke Djokovic at the end of the third set when it was assumed the players were headed for a tiebreak. Nadal also won 50 receiving points compared to only 28 for Djokovic.
Another statistic where Nadal dominated Djokovic was unforced errors. Nadal only had 14 unforced errors compared to 52 for Djokovic.
What was a surprise to many is the fact that Nadal was tested more by Diego Schwartzman of Argentina in the men’s semi-final than by Djokovic in the final. In the semi-final on Friday, Nadal and Schwartzman had a very long opening game to begin the match when Nadal was serving. Even though Nadal won the game, he was battle tested by Schwartzman throughout the contesy in a straight sets victory of 6-3, 6-3, 7-6.
Just like Iga Swiatek of Poland in the women’s singles event, Nadal went through the entire tournament without losing a set. He was forced to two tiebreaks, but beat Jannik Sinner of Italy in the first set of his quarterfinal match 7-4, and then steamrolled past Schwartzman 7-0 in the third set of his semi-final tiebreak.
With the win, Nadal made grand slam tennis history by winning his 20th grand slam title. That is now tied with Switzerland’s Roger Federer for the most ever.
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