For those who weren’t paying attention, in rather unceremonious fashion Rafael Nadal won the French Open on Tuesday.
While French Open organisers will still continue with the formality of allowing 128 men to play matches over two weeks – largely due to the order for 20,000 baguettes being non-refundable – before presenting the trophy to Rafael Nadal at Roland Garros, Nadal was surprised, ecstatic and joyful to learn of his victory in the early hours of Tuesday morning, Australia time.
The announcement of Rafa’s latest and most surprising grand slam win was made by Roger Federer, who on an unrelated matter announced that he will not be playing in the French Open this year.
Federer has stated on his own website that he will bypass this year’s clay court season and French Open to instead spend time preparing for the grass and hard court season.
It is understood that Rafael Nadal personally phoned Federer to thank him for his 73rd French Open crown.
While sources have neither confirmed nor denied, Rafa is said to have been so thankful to Federer for not playing this year that he is personally going to sign over the birthright of his first born son to Federer.
“I am in amazement,” said a near speechless Rafa.
“When I hear that Roger is not playing at Roland Garros, I couldn’t believe that I had won another title that makes up 97 per cent of all my career grand slam titles.”
Rafael rated his latest win highly.
“This title has to be my absolute finest given I needed to do little more than read that Federer was not playing.”
(Image: AAP Image/Lukas Coch)
While Rafa had felt confident, having won three Federer-less titles on the only surface that suits his game, he was wary that he would have to eventually play either an opponent that had more than ten total career wins or a former grand slam winner in some semblance of form.
However, having lost four matches in a row to the Swiss great, Nadal had been mainly nervous that if he were to reach the final having beaten only inferior opposition like Nicolas Almagro, Dominic Thiem or Andy Murray that a rejuvenated Federer would still manage to defeat him two sets to love in a best-of-five match.
“I was confident when I breezed through my round of 32 match at the Madrid Open against Fabio Fognini in three sets that I was again ready to win grand slam titles that Roger was bypassing.”
Rafa has been preparing himself for high-quality matches by honing his clay court game against only the highest quality of opposition this season at the likes of the Barcelona Open, where he managed to beat future hall-of-famers Rogerio Dutra Silva, Kevin Anderson, Hyeon Chung, Horacio Zeballos, and Dominic Thiem.
It was after beating opposition whose names had to be Googled that Nadal knew he was primed to take on a weakened field and declining Djokovic and claim a Federer-less French Open.
“I still can’t believe it. I mean, the former king of clay, Thomas Muster, only managed to win one French Open. I can’t believe that I am now eleven times better than Muster,” said Rafa, who makes no secret of his deep knowledge of the history of the game.
“I know Guga win three French Opens, so now I am almost four times better than him. I will try for 12 French opens next year, but that is a long time away. We don’t yet know if Roger is going to bypass next year’s French Open also.”
Andy Murray was asked to comment on Rafa’s latest triumph, but his manager said the soon-to-be world number 37 was not available for comment.
Rafa was asked what he planned to do for the rest of the season after the French Open.
“I’m not sure. I talk to Wimbledon organisers, but apparently they are keeping that grand slam on grass and have refused to play that tournament on clay. I say to them they can paint the clay green so it will still look like grass, but they will not return my calls.”
“So maybe I skip the small tournaments and focus on the bigger ones. I have the big one in July – the SkiStar Swedish Open clay tournament – before the last big tournament for the season before the Tour Finals, the Generali Open clay tournament in Austria.”
“I will try and focus on the US Open as well, but we will see if Roger is playing in that tournament too.”
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