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Novak Djokovic led Rafael Nadal to almost unprecedented levels of excellence at Roland Garros on Sunday afternoon, powerless to prevent his oldest rival from winning his 13th French Open and the 20th Major he needed to equal everyone’s record. the times of his absent friend, Roger Federer.
Nadal’s 100th victory here was near perfect: 6-0, 6-1, 7-5 in two hours and 41 minutes in front of a drastically reduced audience due to the pandemic in a rescheduled slam under a new roof on the Philippe court. Chatrier, with the flecks of the Parisian sun sneaking through the gaps, but also an ending of undulating contradictions.
How to explain a first set in which the top two players in the men’s game exchanged shots of overwhelming quality for 45 minutes, but Nadal inflicted a rare bagel at world number one? In fact, in many stages of this passionate fight, the scoreboard seemed to be at odds with what was happening on the court.
There was almost equal carnage in the second set before Djokovic launched the inevitable comeback in the third to give the occasion a garland of the respectability it deserved. But there was no denying the incomparable Spaniard, who scored his fourth ace to piously free himself from the agony.
On the court, he refused to celebrate the drawing alongside Federer, intending to embrace the moment as his national anthem filled the nearly empty stadium. Djokovic was not so reluctant: “Today you showed why you are the king of clay,” he told his humble friend.
The first time they played here, in 2006, Djokovic retired with a back injury in the second set. On Sunday, at 33, he brought a suspicious neck and his oversized heart. I needed it.
They closed their horns like a pair of old pugs, knowing they were about to suffer as they had so often. Nadal, hitting from deep but keeping an eye on the drop shot, drew first blood early to break 40-15 down.
From there, the set and the match entered the realm of the surreal. There will be many who witnessed it and who will swear that the Serbian played better tennis in the first set, although both were on a plane that few made it to.
“It was remarkable the shooting from both players,” observed two-time champion Jim Courier on ITV. “Nadal was very aware of the drop shot.”
It was foolish to say that the loot would go to the player with the strongest desire, as is the cliché, because they both wanted it as much as Greta Thunberg wants a clean planet. Each shot echoed along with a growl. The lungs sucked in the cool air hard.
What they were both looking to exploit was their eye for angle, and it was a pleasure to watch as they fine-tuned the points of the closed quarters with astonishing anticipation and the sharpest of 30+ reflexes, along with deep and wide muscular winners.
When Djokovic saved three break points in the second set to maintain serve for the first time after 56 minutes, his spirits lightened momentarily, until he scored a short forehand oversight to ruin Game 3.
Nadal was not yet the undisputed master of his “own house,” as Djokovic called it beforehand, but his game was rock solid with a 92 percent first serve. Djokovic, for his part, withered with the ball in hand and Nadal read his umpteenth drop to take a 4-1 lead. Although his level had slipped from the heights of the first set, Djokovic was not playing poorly.
It took Djokovic an hour and a half to hold on again, lengthening the second set a bit more. It was a compelling theater and difficult to watch. Nadal had done this to many players, including here in 2008 against Federer, but never to Djokovic. After a token resistance, Djokovic fell two sets after an hour and a half.
He came forward for the first time at the start of the third set, after an hour and 43 minutes of gripping theater. Now he would achieve the best comeback in modern play, winning three straight sets from 2-0 against the greatest player in clay tennis history, or he would lose for the first time in six slam finals since Stan Wawrinka beat him at the US Open. in 2016.
It was inevitably the latter, but the loser held his head almost as high as the winner at the end. It was Nadal’s 27th victory in their rivalry, the ninth in 16 slams and the eighth in nine games at Roland Garros.
“It’s beyond anything anyone could have imagined,” observed tournament director Guy Forget. “Maybe in the future someone will witness something better, but in my opinion, that’s the greatest sporting achievement that any sport has ever seen.”
Nadal’s achievements are embroidered in ocher. His 100th victory at Roland Garros was the 999th of his career, almost 10% on French clay. It has been primarily a benign Spanish government, tolerated and then celebrated in the face of the inevitable.
The victory over an opponent who had not lost in 38 complete matches all year placed him in the most illustrious centurion club, along with Chris Evert’s 101 victories at the US Open, Federer’s 102 in Melbourne and 101 in Wimbledon, and Serena Williams, who won 106 times at Flushing Meadows.
Only Federer, at 31, has played in more singles slam finals than Nadal (28) and Djokovic (27). That is an almost impenetrable exclusion of his contemporaries in the Open era. Federer has extended his 20 majors in 14 years and seven months, just four months longer than Nadal. Many marriages don’t last that long, and their relationship, with Djokovic’s interventions, has been the enduring rivalry of modern sport.
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When Iga Swiatek won the women’s title on Saturday, she became the first 19-year-old to lift an individual trophy here since … Nadal. However, no one in the history of the game has won more than Nadal’s six slams after turning 30.
How many more you can add depends on your health and your ambition. He once said that he was sorry he wasn’t younger. Winning finishes of this quality will put a few more wrinkles on your Spanish forehead.
