TennisNH

Rafa’s ‘Moon Landing’ Among Sports’ Greatest All-Time Records

11-Oct-2020 23:31:00 | ATP World Tour

One hundred wins. Thirteen titles. And a 26-0 record when he reaches the semi-finals. Rafael Nadal proved on Sunday that he still owns Roland Garros. In a year when nothing has been normal, it seemed fitting that Djokovic-Nadal LVI took place in the final of Roland Garros, indoors, on October 10, in front of 1,000 bundled up fans in masks.

Djokovic held a narrow 29-26 ATP Head2Head edge coming into the match, but in major finals, they were even at four wins each. With heavy conditions and balls not to his liking, Nadal’s shots were reportedly jumping three inches lower than usual during the tournament. But none of his victims in the run-up to the final were playing a sad violin for him, as the Mallorcan rampaged through his half of the draw without dropping a set.

And as Nadal bageled Djokovic in the first set, one couldn’t help but wonder if all the supposedly good reasons why this would be the year where Rafa might finally lose a Roland Garros final — the balls, the weather, the closed roof, the lack of preparation — were essentially nonsense. Come on guys, it’s still Nadal at Roland Garros, and he’s still a serial killer on clay at any time of year, in any conditions.

Djokovic had never been bageled in a major final—in fact, it was Nadal who had last whitewashed him in a set in the final of Rome last year. It took the Serb 54 minutes to win a game. After 12 French titles and 99 wins, could anyone have predicted that Nadal was saving perhaps his finest performance for win No. 100? But there he was, looking resplendent in baby blue, dancing around his backhand on the red dirt as though he was still a fresh-faced 19-year-old, blasting those lethal, inside out forehands that have given a generation of players nightmares.

Perhaps the scariest thing for every other player on the Tour to contemplate is that on Sunday on the red clay in Paris, Nadal looked better than ever at age 34 as he dismantled his great rival Novak Djokovic, 6-0, 6-2, 7-5, becoming the first man in the Open Era to win four majors without dropping a set. His form was so sublime that we must now consider the possibility that, if he wants to, the swashbuckling Mallorcan could win his favourite tournament a few more times, perhaps more!

When he finally calls it a career, how many Roland Garros titles will he own? No one in the history of the sport has won 13 times at the same tournament, but now 15 or more Roland Garros title runs doesn’t seem out of the question for the Spaniard. As long as his name appears on the draw sheet at this tournament, he’ll be the favourite. As he said on court after the match, “Roland Garros means everything to me, I’ve spent the most important moments of my tennis career here.”

It was a day for the history books and so we must now contemplate where Rafa’s achievement stands in the broader sporting picture of so-called unbreakable records. In tennis, it’s hard to imagine anyone will ever play an 11-hour match again, as John Isner and Nicolas Mahut did at Wimbledon in 2010. Will anyone have a 643 shot rally again, as Vicki Nelson and Jean Hepner did in 1984? Not a chance.

Nor is it likely that a player will come close to Chris Evert’s mark of 125 consecutive wins on clay, Steffi Graf’s Golden Slam in 1988 or Rod Laver’s two Calendar Grand Slams. Esther Vergeer won an incredible 162 singles and 134 doubles wheelchair tennis titles, a feat that will be nearly impossible to beat.

There are also a number of Olympic records that may never be broken: Michael Phelps’ 23 career medals, Bob Beamon’s 8.9m long jump, Usain Bolt’s sprinting records, Marjorie Gestring winning Olympic gold in diving at age 13, among others.