Sunday, June 11, 2017

2017 FRENCH OPEN: Nadal Wins 15th Major, La Decima at Roland Garros






As expected, Rafael Nadal won his 15th major and 10th French Open title at Roland Garros today by defeating 2015 French Open champion Stan Wawrinka by the lopsided score of 6-2 6-3 6-1. Nadal's "La decima" is a historic sports achievement because no other player in the Open era had  ever won one of the major tennis tournaments ten times before. (Martina Navratilova won Wimbledon 9 times and Margaret Court won the Australian 11 times but *seven* of those wins were before the Open era began in 1968.)

For the third time in his career (2008 and 2010) Nadal won the French Open without dropping a set, in fact no one even won more than 4 games in any of the 27 sets he played this year, and he only gave up a grand total of 35 games, his stingiest performance yet.

The win means that Nadal is now by himself in second position on the all-time grad slam singles list, at 15, a mere 3 major titles behind Roger Federer who is five years older. There is a real question as to how many more French Opens Nadal can win, because no one expects him to stop competing at the tournament where he now sports a 85-2 record. If he ties Federer's record of 18, will Nadal be considered the G.O.A.T? In my opinion, he would have to surpass Federer's tally to convincingly win that argument, and Is still think that is unlikely to happen, but only time will tell!

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