Data check: Nadal is the King of Clay, but who could be a pretender to his throne?

Repeating that Rafael Nadal is the King of Clay is a exercise in futility. His dominance on clay is already undisputed in the history of the game. The world No 1 is arguably having one of his best seasons on clay ever and the French Open hasn’t even started.

This year, he has lost only one of the 20 matches he has played on dirt this season, to Austria’s Dominic Thiem in the quarter-final of the Madrid Masters. This gives him an incredible win rate of 95%, punching slightly above his average of 92%.

He had a similar run at the European clay-court season last year, losing to Theim in the quarters of the Rome Masters. And we all know that he went on to lift his tenth French Open title without dropping a set.

However unlike 2017, Nadal lost a sizable part of the season to injury this year, not playing on the South American clay after retiring midway from his Australian Open quarter-final.

But he has roared back on his favourite surface, setting a new record of winning 50 consecutive sets, breaking John McEnroe’s 34-year old record. None of these sets even went to a tiebreaker as he won his 11 title at Monte Carlo and Barcelona.

In fact, he dropped only four sets the entire clay season – two to Thiem at Madrid, one each to Fabio Fognini and Alexander Zverev at the Rome Masters, staging a dominant comeback in either match en route his eighth title there.

In addition, Nadal has been handed a dream draw – not that it would matter much – with former champions Novak Djokovic, Stan Wawrinka and clay-court dark horse Dominic Thiem on the opposite side and a chance at playing Alexander Zverev only in the final.

The point is simple, very little stands between Nadal – who has a 79-2 career record at Roland Garros – and ‘La Undecima’, his 11 title at the clay-court Grand Slam. The top 10 seeds all pale in comparison with their poor form on the red dirt and characteristic erratic play.

So any French Open men’s singles preview can only tell you one thing, who are the players who could come close to beating... make that playing Nadal at the business end of the Slam but also why the Spaniard is unmatched on terre battue. Here’s what the numbers say.

Nadal’s win-loss record on clay in extraordinary with a 92% success rate. None of his present competitors come even close to this record, so to be fair, let only look at their record in 2018. The closest is Zverev with an 85% in 20 matches, with two titles – the Madrid Masters and the Munich Open.

Many in tennis circles consider the 21-year-old German to be the biggest threat in Paris. However, he doesn’t have the best of records at Roland Garros having won only two matches on the red clay (he has played only four) In 2016 (where he lost to #13 Theim in the third round) and 2017, as the 9 seed and on the back of his first Masters win in Rome, crashed out in the first round to Verdasco.

Zverev still waiting for Slam breakthrough

However, this year he comes in as the second seed and with a 13-match clay-court winning streak halted by Nadal in the Rome finals last week. While it was his fifth defeat in five meetings with the Spaniard, the way he fought back from losing the first set 6-1 shows his improved temperament.

But a best-of-five tournament can be a different ball game and he will be conscious that he has never reached the quarter-finals of a Grand Slam before.

Another aspect that Zverev comes close to Nadal is his return game. This is one area where the Spaniard is utterly unbeatable and has really set himself apart this year. He has won a whopping 48.1% of games when receiving a serve. In other words, he has broken almost half the serves aimed at him on clay this year. The closest competitor to him is Gilles Simon, who hasn’t made it past a quarter final in the clay court season.

But Zverev could pose a challenge here as he has won nearly 35% of his return games, the highest among the main contenders. He also tends to break better than Thiem with 34.3% break point conversion rate.

Thiem converts break points 26.3% of the time on clay, but Nadal does it 46% of the time on the surface according to Tennis Abstract. Stefanos Tsitsipas has a similar pattern on clay to Nadal but at 20 years old, he maybe too inexperienced to take on Nadal.

When it comes to serve though, it is the other pretender, Thiem, who is the closest to the clay-court colossus.

When he’s serving on clay, the Spaniard is winning 87.12% of his games. The only players that have a higher average are big servers like John Isner and Milos Raonic who aren’t nearly as good if they have to rally on clay.

Thiem, who seems to have a solid serve as well, wins over 81% of his service games, even if his doesn’t break them as often.

Before thrashing Thiem 6-0, 6-2 in Monte Carlo last month, Nadal had said the Austrian was “probably one of the three best clay-court players on tour.” The 24-year-old made good on that claim when he became the player to break Nadal’s streak on clay in almost a year with 7-5, 6-3 win in Madrid.

Erratic Thiem

But true to his inconsistent self, he went down 6-4, 1-6, 6-3 to Italy’s Fabio Fognini in the first round at Rome Masters, smashing his racket in fury.

But this is a pattern not unknown to people who have watched him play. For many, he is the heir apparent, the ‘Prince of Clay’ with back-to-back semi-final runs (running into Djokovic and Nadal) at French Open and a 75% win record in the four years he has played in Paris.

But he invariably runs out of gas at crucial moments and a cramped schedule doesn’t help his case. Case in point: in the week before the Slam, he is currently playing the ATP 250 in Lyon France, the only top 8 French Open seed competing. Agreed, he went out early in Rome but match practice over training a week prior to a Slam is an odd pattern for a top 10 player.

Of course, being a Grand Slam, there will always be the dark horses and wild cards in the mix, a la Robin Soderling. There are also two former champions in the mix, although both Djokovic and Wawrinka are coming off injury layoffs that have pushed them to be 20 and 23 seed respectively.

The Serb is one of only two players to beat Nadal at Roland Garros and was able to stretch Nadal at the Rome Masters in their semi-final encounter, even if it was a straight sets win. However, it will take a real superhuman effort from the 2016 and 2015 champion to be a roadblock for the guy who has lifted the trophy 10 times before. It should surprise no one is the top-seeded Spaniard lifts his 11 and 17 Grand Slam title two weeks later.

The numbers say it all, French open 2018 is Rafael Nadal’s title to lose.