Guga Kuerten, the last clay court legend before the appearance of Rafael Nadal, usually jokes when he is around Roland Garros with the spaceship in which the Spanish tennis player travels. “I wonder where the spaceship parks, because it’s not from this world“says the triple champion in Paris. The great John McEnroe once said that “Beating Nadal in the best of five sets on clay is like licking your elbow… impossible!“, while Guillermo Vilas went so far as to assure that a person had to be “created artificially” so that someone could knock down Nadal at Roland Garros.
Those three sentences are just three anecdotes of the many that explain Nadal’s special relationship with Roland Garros, a tournament in which he has won 14 titles and in which he has only lost four of the 116 matches he has played. That’s 96.5% wins in a span of two decades, with 100% wins in finals. However, neither Kuerten nor McEnroe nor Vilas ever faced Nadal on the clay of Roland Garros. What have the tennis players felt being there, in the immensity of the Philippe Chatrier, with such a monster in front of them?
Those who can best answer that question are their victims.. Nadal, who retired this week in Malaga, has faced a total of 74 different tennis players and has beaten them all, because the only three people who have managed to beat him in his fiefdom have been Novak Djokovic (Nadal wins 8-2 in the face to face), Robin Soderling (3-1 for the Spanish) and Alexander Zverev (1-1). Of the other 71, only two managed to force a fifth set: Isner in 2011 and Aliassime in 2022. Theirs has been an insulting superiority, something practically impossible to match. From winning his first match against Lars Burgsmuller back in 2005 until he bowed out against Zverev in the first round of 2024.
“We were all praying that we wouldn’t run into him. We were like, ‘Can you imagine that at the end, after two sets, you still haven’t scored a game?'”
“I played against him when he couldn’t even walk because of the foot problem. He went with his foot anesthetized. In fact, I saw him the next day and he was on crutches. “I couldn’t walk,” Ruud himself said a few months ago during an exhibition about his experience at Roland Garros against Nadal. “Although I lost badly (6-3, 6-3 and 6-0), I was actually thinking the night before: ‘You never know, maybe you’re so injured that you can’t even walk, maybe if there’s a year that someone can surprise you it could be this one.’ We all knew he was injured, but he beat us all“.
The Norwegian remembers that feeling of helplessness perfectly. “I’m not going to say his tactics are simple, but he just traps you in the backhand. And in the end there is nothing you can do. It makes it too physical. To win a point, you feel like you have to hit a winner all the time from up here (points over his head on the backhand). “He can hit that top spin forehand blindfolded.”
What Ruud felt was experienced firsthand by many tennis players. “I remember that game at Chatrier perfectly. The field is huge, but I saw her as small as a ping pong table. I saw the field as small, small and Rafa as a giant.I couldn’t make a point, it was terrible,” Horacio Zeballos tells Relevo. The Argentine faced Nadal in the second round of 2010 and fell 6-2, 6-2 and 6-3.
“There is no one who comes remotely close to Nadal’s game on land”
Another Argentine, Diego Schwartzman, managed to play more the times he faced the giant at Roland Garros. In fact, he played three matches and won two sets, something that in itself has merit. “Rafa is unbeatable here, the numbers say it. He always finds a way to escape and win. I hope that next year I won’t be on his side in the draw,” he said in 2021, resigned after losing in the 2020 semis and in the 2021 quarterfinals with the Balearic Islands. And the fact is that no one, not even the most daring, wanted to see to Nadal for his side of the draw.
Even Moyà, his current coach, suffered it
“Before the drawing was drawn, we were all praying not to run into him. We said to ourselves: ‘Can you imagine that you enter center court and at the end, after two sets, you still haven’t scored a game?‘”, Jo-Wilfried Tsonga said a few weeks ago. Luckily for him, he never got to experience that. The last Frenchman to snatch a set from Nadal in Paris was Paul Henri Mathieu and it was in 2006.
The following year, in 2007, one of those who suffered him was Carlos Moyà, who ended up being his coach. “Rafa doesn’t intimidate me,” he said in the previous hours. The former number one and champion on the Paris clay won 6-4, 6-3 and 6-0 in the quarterfinals. “It’s a situation in which the track gets bigger and he gets bigger,” he recalls now in a conversation with Relevo. “If I’m not mistaken, he has lost four games in his career there. That makes you see the magnitude of the task it is to beat him there when he is in decent condition. CWhen he gets there, he doesn’t transform, but his level automatically goes up.“.
Djokovic can give a good account of that. The Serb beat Nadal in the 2015 quarterfinals and the 2021 semifinals, but the Spaniard beat him in the other eight duels, including three finals and three other semis. “Playing against Rafa at Roland Garros It is probably one of the biggest challenges you can have on the circuit“said the current number one during the last tournament in Rome. “We all know his record there and I have probably been the player who has faced him the most times on that court.”
“The court is bigger, there is more space and that visually affects the game a lot. There are moments in which it is well positioned, with rhythm, without making mistakes and you feel that it is impenetrable, like a wall. He is an incredible athlete and facing him at Roland Garros is a unique challenge“Djokovic abounded.
The Serbian managed to defeat Nadal in Paris, something that Federer could never achieve. The Swiss faced the Spaniard six times, in four finals and two semifinals, and did not even take him to the fifth set once. His last defeat was in the 2019 semifinals and he left a phrase to remember afterwards. “I can’t find anyone as good as Rafa to train me” he said smiling. “It’s incredible how he plays from the deepest part of the court and then recovers on the baseline. There is no one who comes remotely close to Nadal’s game on land.” Roger’s word.
The problem with Nadal started before the match
One of Nadal’s hallmarks was his ritual in the locker room tunnel before games. There, when there were minutes left in the battle, the Spaniard intimidated his rivals by running, warming up. Presence. Here I am, this is my gardenhe told them with his gestures. Impossible to forget is the image of Ruud moments before going out on the court for the 2022 final.
The Norwegian He waits like an animal on the way to the slaughterhouse. He looks nervous. Suddenly, behind him, his rival appears. It’s Rafael Nadalthen 13-time champion, 13 out of 13 in finals, the absolute legend of the tournament, the indestructible guy. The Spaniard shakes hands with his team, with Carlos Moyà, Marc López, Francis Roig and Rafa Maymó. Ruud looks at him out of the corner of his eye. Then, Nadal drops the bag, picks up the racket and starts moving.
“How much more less is left?” asks Ruud. He’s a nervous wreck. “About 30 seconds,” a voice answers. Ruud remains still, moving his legs slightly. and suddenly Nadal passes him by a few centimeters running like a bull. Nadal doesn’t stop still: he goes, he comes back, he hits the air with rackets, he breathes hard. The Nordic has lost before leaving. “People who say that he had already lost the game before going out on the court may be right,” the protagonist even said.
Djokovic, one of those who suffered Nadal the most in Paris, has never spoken about those previous moments in the locker room tunnel. However, his friend and compatriot Nemanja Nedovic, a basketball player, revealed what the number one suffered at that time. “Nadal was like a bull, he ran around him, he exercised, he occupied the space. Nadal won almost all of those matches because he somehow showed his dominance. By occupying that space, he was foreshadowing what was to come. He intimidates his opponents,” Nedovid explained in a documentary about Djokovic that aired on Serbian television in 2022.
“If I remember correctly, Djokovic was then with Becker (referring to 2015). And Becker told him: ‘You have to occupy that space. Start moving, running, breathing hard, like he does. Show him that you also dominate. Show him that you are there, that you are not going to step aside on the court,'” the basketball player continued. “Djokovic started doing that and it helped him a lot since then. I even think he won that match with Nadal. “Those psychological games can have a very big impact.”
