The upcoming French Open will be the second of the post-Rafael Nadal era. It will also be the first of said era without his heir apparent, Carlos Alcaraz. The reigning back-to-back champion’s bid for a famous three-peat has already gone up in smoke after a wrist issue forced him to withdraw before a ball was struck. Now, his rival Jannik Sinner walks into the draw as the overwhelming favorite, a 29-match winning streak behind him, a career Grand Slam within touching distance.
The Nadal Era
Throughout a whopping 17-year stretch between 2005 and 2022, Nadal wouldn’t miss a single Roland Garros, injuries be damned. And let’s face it, no one did it better than the Spanish supremo. The King of Clay amassed a mighty 14 French Open titles throughout his stellar career and ruled over the City of Lights with an iron fist. However, it’s a little-known fact that the recently retired star honed some of his skills in an obscure place: the poker table.
Speaking to The Independent back in 2013, Nadal said: “In poker, you have to wait for the moment to play aggressively, like you do in tennis. You can’t play crazily because in the end you’ll make mistakes.” Many other athletes also point to poker as an excellent training ground for their mental abilities, and that has encouraged even casual sports enthusiasts to turn to this game for inspiration.
Players in Australia, for instance, might turn to Ignition Poker Australia when they’re off the court, using it as a training tool for resilience, restraint, and learning how to read the other person’s body language. Maybe you think reading others isn’t crucial in tennis – but knowing how to judge what your opponent is about to do with the ball can give you a true edge on the court.
With both poker skills and on-court practice under his belt, Nadal gained superstardom and utter dominance in Paris. But throughout his reign of dominance at Roland Garros, which other players managed to steal a French Open title out from under the King’s nose? Let’s take a look.
Roger Federer
Entering Roland Garros in 2009, Nadal was the four-time defending champion, having won every edition from 2005 through 2008, and dropped just seven sets in a 31-0 winning streak. He had arrived in Paris having just won the Australian Open, defeating rival Roger Federer in a five-set final that handed him all four Grand Slam titles simultaneously. Physically, there were no warning signs for what was to come.
How do you beat a man who had never lost at this venue? The answer, it turned out, was Robin Söderling.
The unheralded Swedish 23rd seed played an aggressive, flat-hitting game in the fourth round specifically designed to nullify Nadal’s extreme topspin, and it worked — four sets, and the 31-match winning streak was over. One of the most seismic upsets in Grand Slam history; the tennis world went silent.
With Nadal eliminated, Federer — who had spent years chasing this particular prize — moved through to the final and was clinical against the Swedish outsider, winning 6-1, 7-6(1), 6-4. The victory completed Federer’s career Grand Slam — the only major that had eluded him — and equaled Pete Sampras’s then all-time men’s record of 14 Grand Slam titles. Without Söderling’s extraordinary intervention, Federer’s path would almost certainly have been blocked.
Stan Wawrinka
What made 2015 so extraordinary wasn’t just that Nadal lost. It was how he lost, and to whom, and what it suggested about the shifting order of the game. The King of Clay had rebounded from that defeat by reeling off five straight titles between 2010 and 2014 and embarking on an even longer 35-match winning streak. Djokovic, however, was world number one, in the form of his life, and was determined to finally beat Nadal on his favorite surface at the seventh time of asking.
The pair would meet in the quarterfinals, and the Serbian would make good on his bid to dismantle the nine-time champion. He ran out a 7-5, 6-3, 6-1 straight sets victor, a scoreline so emphatic it made Nadal finally look human. “He was better than me,” Nadal said afterwards, with characteristic honesty. It was only his second-ever defeat at Roland Garros.
Djokovic arrived at the final having won 28 consecutive matches, chasing the one major that had always denied him, the career Grand Slam seemingly inevitable. What he found was Stan Wawrinka at the absolute peak of his powers — an eighth seed who played that afternoon like someone who had saved it all for this exact moment. Wawrinka stunned Nole 4-6, 6-4, 6-3, 6-4, denying the world number one a career Grand Slam on the sport’s grandest clay-court stage. But his moment in the Parisian sun would come.
Novak Djokovic
Only one man has claimed multiple titles throughout the Nadal era. That, of course, is Djokovic.
2016
Nadal arrived in 2016 with a persistent left wrist injury that had begun causing problems at the Madrid Open — and this time, the body didn’t hold. He won his first two matches, including his 200th Grand Slam victory, then withdrew before the third round, the wrist making further competition impossible. Federer was also absent due to injury. The draw had been quietly hollowed out, and Djokovic would take full advantage.
He beat Andy Murray 3-6, 6-1, 6-2, 6-4 in the final — conceding the first set before taking complete control — and in doing so completed his career Grand Slam, and laid the ghost of that bitter defeat to Wawrinka the year prior to rest. He would have to wait five long years for the next time he would reign supreme in Paris.
2021
2021 rolled around, and once again, Nadal was on a roll. He had claimed every title between 2017 and 2020. He was the defending champion with a mighty thirteen Roland Garros titles now racked up. The most decorated player in the history of any single Grand Slam tournament — a record that would have been unthinkable when Nadal first won here as a teenager in 2005. Yet behind the statistics, a shadow: Mueller-Weiss syndrome, a chronic left foot condition, had been causing him significant pain for over a year.
He reached the semifinals, where Djokovic was waiting. The match many called the best of the tournament produced a scoreline of 3-6, 6-3, 7-6(4), 6-2 — Nadal winning the first set, Djokovic taking control, and by the fourth set, it was apparent Nadal’s movement was reduced by a left ankle problem. “Life goes on,” Nadal said, in those three words, managing both acknowledgement and defiance.
The final between Djokovic and Stefanos Tsitsipas was a thriller: the Greek underdog won the first two sets, seemingly moments from history. But Djokovic’s resilience — that extraordinary quality — proved decisive. He fought back to win 6-7(6), 2-6, 6-3, 6-2, 6-4; only the sixth time in the Open era that a player had won a Grand Slam final from two sets down. For Djokovic, his second Roland Garros crown took him to 19 Slams overall, just one behind Nadal’s haul.
2023
The King of Clay would return to his throne in 2022, but in 2023, Nadal suffered a devastating hip injury at the Australian Open, and he would miss that year’s Roland Garros, the first time he hadn’t played at the tournament since 2005. Once again, Djokovic would take advantage. He handily dispatched Casper Ruud in the final, while Nadal would never return to the summit of the game ever again.
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