2013 FRENCH OPEN: Rafa Wins Record 8th Title; 12th Major

As expected,  Rafael Nadal won his 8th French Open title at Roland Garros, beating David Ferrer 6-3 6-2 6-3 to win his 12th career major. Amazingly, since Nadal is repeating as champion he is not gaining any ATP points so he will actually lose the World #4 ranking to Ferrer when the new rankings come out on Monday.

Nadal has played 60 matches in his career at Roland Garros and won 59 of them (the sole loss to Robin Soderling in 2009), claiming 8 titles. No male player has ever won 8 titles at one of the major championships. Roger Federer has played in 8 Wimbledon finals but he has 7 titles, losing the 2008 men's final to Nadal in what some people call the greatest match of all time (and definitely the greatest match on grass). Nadal was also part of the greatest match at the Australian Open, last year's final win by Djokovic which lasted nearly 6 hours.

Speaking of incredible matches, John McEnroe and other commentators are already calling Friday's semifinal match between Nadal and Novak Djokovic won in 4 hours and 37 minutes by Nadal "the best clay court match of all time."

The result in today's final match was never really in doubt. This year I correctly predicted both finals, 0 of 2 men's semifinal matches and 3 of 4 men's quarterfinal matches. On the women's side I correctly predicted 2 of 2 semifinals and 3 of 4 quarterfinals.

The next major (Wimbledon) starts on Monday June 24th. Nadal did not play any tennis after losing in the 2nd round there last year so he has a very good chance of ending the year as #1 unless Djokovic has a stronger year in the last two majors of the year then he did last year.