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WE were hoping for a contest, but no-one really imagined that Stan Wawrinka was going to beat Rafael Nadal yesterday in the French Open final.
In the event, it wasn’t remotely close, as Nadal polished Wawrinka off in just 2hr 5min. The scoreline – a 6-2, 6-3, 6-1 monstering – means that Nadal has dropped just 35 games over the seven rounds.
Since Novak Djokovic hit the buffers last summer, Nadal has no more serious challengers on this surface. He is more dominant today than ever, and his extraordinary statistics in this final – 27 winners to just 12 unforced errors – are a tribute to a player on top of his game.
This is not quite the smoothest grand-slam campaign ever mounted, but it can be placed second behind Bjorn Borg, who dropped 32 games at the 1978 French Open.
As for “La Decima” – the achievement of winning ten French Open titles – that was accurately described by John McEnroe as the ultimate sporting achievement.
Wawrinka needed to produce the performance of his life if he was going to keep this close, but the after-effects of his 4hr 34min rumble with Andy Murray on Friday may have been a factor in his slow start.
The underdog lost the first five points with some inaccurate play, and never established the heavy groundstrokes that could perhaps have pushed Nadal back off the baseline.
The essential problem, though, was that Nadal was so comfortable off both wings. In the old days, he used to run around his backhand.
Now it has improved dramatically, just as Roger Federer’s backhand reached an entirely new level in the hard-court events at the start of the season.
These two old masters have each won one major and two 1000-point events since the start of the season, and lead the rankings table for 2017 by a street. Should they meet at Wimbledon, we can expect a titanic battle, and hopefully a closer contest than we saw yesterday.
– Telegraph
Bongani Ndlovu
Online Reporter