Rafa’s Season and Place in History

As Rafael Nadal played his third set against Nikolay Davydenko in the semis of Rome ATP Masters Series Tournament, I could not help but question myself if I had ever seen a better clay court player. They were on serve, midway through the final set, and Davydenko looked like he may be able to pull off the monumental upset, but for the purposes of the answer to my question, it did not matter.

One match was not going to change the answer. Nadal was one of the best clay court players that I have ever seen. Was he better on clay than Sergei Bruguera at his best? Thomas Muster at his best? Guillermo Vilas, Ivan Lendl, or Mats Wilander? Certainly not better than Bjorn Borg, right?

I returned my attention to the match. All of a sudden, when everyone thought the quality could not get any higher, Nadal pulled off some fantastic flat winners from his forehand side, his shots started bouncing even closer to the baseline, and switched to a gear that seemed impossible. Fifteen minutes later, he was the winner, for the 76th time in a row on this surface.

The answer to my question of 15 minutes ago became slightly more lucid. Nadal was the best clay court player that I have ever seen since Bjorn Borg.

I will not go into a "Borg vs. Nadal on clay" comparison because one is a legend, whereas the other is on his way to becoming one. This comparison will only be fair once Nadal's career is over. However, there is no doubt that on clay Nadal already deserves to be in the same class with Borg, a class occupied by only the two of them.

Good clay court players are grinders by nature. Even successful clay court players who were not strictly baseliners, such as Yannick Noah and Andres Gomez, were willing to "eat the dirt" to win on clay. However, to be great on clay, that is not enough. To say that Nadal owes his success to his animalistic fighting ability and physical strength would represent a narrow view of this man's qualities.

For beginners, Nadal has a good feel for the ball. Some will raise their eyebrows at this statement, but Nadal has more touch than most players on any surface. He can drop shot. He can hit the loopy, short-bouncing, angle ball. Out of nowhere, he can flatten his forehand for a thunderous winner. He can hit the fully stretched two-handed backhand cross-court passing shot. On his serve, he can slice, kick, and spin at will. To top it all, he can do all these when it's 6-5 in the final set, after three or four hours on the court.

Can he volley? Some say that he can't, I disagree, but does it really matter? Did Muster, Vilas, or Bruguera have to volley well to become great clay court players? Nope. Can Nadal volley at least as good if not better than these guys? Yep! He will need to volley better to win consistently on other surfaces, but that would be the subject of another article.

During his 77-match win streak, he has defeated 50 different players and was pushed to the final set only 10 times. By the time this article is published, he may have added more in the ATP Hamburg Masters Series tournament. So, can anybody beat him on clay? If yes, how?

Ironically, the player who has come the closest to beating him is the world's number one player, Roger Federer. While, it is true that Nadal has dominated him on clay (6-0 against Federer), Federer has come close to beating Nadal on two different occasions and has won sets against him. Don't laugh, that is closer than anyone else has come to defeating Nadal, other than Davydenko last week, and Guillermo Coria in the Rome 2005 finals. I started the paragraph with "ironically" because Federer does not really have the game to beat Nadal on clay. He has come close simply because he happens to be the best player in the world by a large margin and should logically give trouble to Nadal on any surface whenever they play against each other.

To beat Nadal on clay, his opponent must take the ball early off the bounce, hit power shots, keep the rallies short, and hit a large number of winners and aces. In short, he must have a "big" game and not let Nadal get into a rhythm. Federer, as superior as he is in terms of skill, is not by nature a power player. This is why he has not beaten Nadal comfortably on any surface. Even their grass court encounter at Wimbledon was a tightly contested match. Nadal's counter-punching ability comes in handy when returning Federer's well-placed but not necessarily powerful shots. Federer's wide variety of shots that completely look martian to other players do not seem to bother Nadal.

To add insult to injury, Federer has more worries than Nadal this year. He is in the middle of his worst slump since he became number one. He just parted ways with Tony Roche, his coach during six of his 10 Slam titles. Then again, with or without Roche, Federer's problem remains the same. He is clearly lacking in motivation. His footwork and focus level have dropped down due to the apparent lack of drive on the court. In two of his four losses in the last four tournaments, first one against Guillermo Canas and against Volandri last week, he did not even look like he wanted to be on the court. Unless he shows drastic improvement in a short two-week span, his dreams of beating Nadal and winning Roland Garros will have to be postponed.

That leaves us with a bunch of other players who realistically have close to zero chance of beating Nadal on clay. This week in Hamburg, a tournament that he has never won before, he may be pushed by a motivated player, or even Federer himself, but Roland Garros is another story.

Davydenko may have challenged him in Rome, but it is highly unlikely he can take three sets out of five in Paris against Nadal. Other classic clay court players lack the power to hit winners consistently for three full sets and they don't have the serve to combine the little power that they have.

The only other players left that have a chance against Nadal are players like Fernando Gonzales, James Blake, Marat Safin, Thomas Berdych, Mikhail Youzhny, Novak Djokovic, and Andy Roddick who could, on any given day, come up with a big enough game to rattle Nadal, make him hit his shots late, and force unexpected errors out of him. Combine that with exceptional serving and some help from up above, maybe the impossible could occur. Blake, Youzhny, Gonzales, and Djokovic have already shown that it is possible. But those matches were not on clay.

Nadal just took two of those players, Gonzales and Djokovic, through a clinic on how it's done on clay. Nadal's balls bounce higher, making it tougher to hit the ball early to put Nadal under pressure. Aces don't come as easy on clay. As fast as Nadal moves on any surface, he is even quicker on clay.

Last but not the least, Nadal's behavior on the court rivals some of the best minds in the history of tennis. Rarely does he look upset or out of control with his emotions and he never (ever) looks defeated. Even Muster, who was a ball of energy on the court, looked like he would lose the fire in his eyes when it looked like the match was slipping away even though his strut on the court remained the same. Let's not forget that Nadal will only turn 21 in June. But he shows the body language and mental toughness of some great champions in the history of the game (Borg again comes to mind). Due to his maturity level physically and mentally, he does not choke in big points and makes all the right decisions throughout the match.

Past clay court monsters have shown a tendency to fade away after a spectacular string of a few years of domination. Bjorn Borg, the best clay court player in the Open era along with Nadal, lasted seven years, clearly longer than other clay court specialists in the last 40 years. The discipline and the hard work that it takes to "eat the dirt" consistently wears them down, shortening their careers, unless they adjust their game during their career to add plan a's and plan b's to their repertoire. Wilander and Lendl have done it and it helped them not only last longer, but also to win important titles on surfaces other than clay. Whether Nadal can make the same transition or not remains an interesting development to watch over the long term.

In the short term, however, don't look for anything interesting. At least for this year's clay court campaign, it is Rafa's season again.