On Sunday, Rafael Nadal will be celebrating his third Masters title on clay this year. In another few weeks, Nadal will be raising his arms up in triumph at Roland Garros for the third year in a row. Go ahead: book it.
Some of you probably think I’m being foolish in jumping the gun. Some will think me a psychic after the French Open is over. I am neither a fool nor a psychic but rather an astute tennis fan. With a 6-4, 6-4 victory over Fernando Gonzales in the quarterfinals of the Hamburg Masters, Rafael Nadal recorded his 80th straight win on clay. Think about that number for a minute. I’ll wait………….still thinking about it……..80….80……80! Eighty straight wins! Are you kidding me? And yet hardly anybody in
The qualities of streaks are hard to measure among different sports. How do you compare UCLA men’s basketball’s 88-game winning streak to Oklahoma Football’s 47-game winning. What’s more impressive: Joe Dimaggio’s 56-game hitting streak or Johnny Unitas’s 47 consecutive games with a touchdown pass? It gets even harder when different eras are thrown into the equation. How does Tiger Woods’s seven tournament wins in a row from 2006-2007 stack up against Byron Nelson’s 11-tournament winning streak in 1945? But no matter what side of those debates you take, the fact of the matter is that all of the aforementioned streaks are special in their own way. All of them awe us with the sheer grandeur of their numbers. And Nadal’s clay-court streak should be up there with them.
Speaking of which, let’s return to the original subject of Rafael Nadal’s ridiculous winning streak on clay. Sure, Roger Federer has won an unprecedented 48 consecutive matches on grass (a streak that like Nadal’s, has not ended), but there are three things that make clay harder to dominate on than grass.
First, grass is the fastest surface in tennis while clay is the slowest. That means the points are shorter in grass-court matches, resulting in less match time, which means less wear and tear on the body, which means less likelihood for injuries and exhaustion for players. Simply put, it takes better physical conditioning to excel on clay than grass.
Second, there are more clay-court specialists than grass-court specialists. On any given day, a player you have never heard of will spring an upset in a clay tournament simply because they have grown up on clay. That means winning clay-court tournaments require not just beating the top players in the world, but also navigating an endless array of single-surface wonders. On the other hand, the list of grass-court specialists is short, especially nowadays that serve-and-volley players have become an endangered species.
And lastly, there is no one shot that gives an advantage on clay. Unlike grass, where a powerful serve or great volleying game give distinct advantages, clay’s naturally slow surface neutralizes the effects of any shot that would give one player the upper hand over another. Instead, speed, stamina, and mental fortitude are a player’s best friend on the red surface. For Nadal to have won day-after-day, tournament-after-tournament on clay, the bulging muscles on his forearms would have mattered only as much as the stubborn muscles within his mind. It is that willpower that will ultimately make Rafa one of the all-greats despite his physical limitations. If Nadal were more naturally talented, he could be challenging Roger Federer for claim as the greatest of all time. Alas, Nadal will only end up being Federer’s most consistent rival.
But wherever Rafael Nadal ends up on the ladder of tennis history, his streak will remain immortal. Someday, this streak will end—maybe at 125, maybe 140, maybe longer—but it will definitely end because that’s just the way streaks are. They have to end at some point. The tragedy will be that this streak ends unappreciated, uncelebrated, unpublicized by the American media. It should be something we can all tell our grandchildren about one day. Instead, most Americans won’t even know that this streak occurred. What a terrible waste of history.
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