Rafael Nadal won a record 10th French Open title at Roland Garros as he surged past a battling Stan Wawrinka in straight sets, 6-2, 6-3, 6-1
Rafael Nadal, a prophet in someone elses land, won his 10th French Open in baking heat here on Sunday afternoon, to the delight of the Parisians who had crammed into Court Philippe Chatrier expecting a classic but were pleased to witness history as their favourite Spaniard destroyed Stan Wawrinka in three sets of clinical efficiency.
It was going to be either a coronation or an insurrection. Not many expected an execution. Nobody, surely, has owned Paris so completely since Napoleon Bonaparte. French tennis has not had a champion since Yannick Noah 34 years ago but they have had Nadal since 2005 and it is a relationship that will linger for a little while yet, it seems even if his French is as unreliable as that of a British tourist.
This was a final as long on celebration as it was short on competitive tension. The crowd, who had given Wawrinka his share of support, rose to greet their inherited tennis prince, even though they craved more entertainment. His exploits in nine previous finals were flashed across the big screen. Commentators reached for superlatives.
Wawrinka, playing with his sponsors wristwatch on, might have suspected his time had run out when broken for the first of six times. He had, after all, taken more than four and a half hours to beat Andy Murray in the semi-finals on Friday, while Nadal was dismissing the young Austrian, Dominic Thiem in straight sets.
After two hours and five minutes of anguish and sporadic success, Wawrinka the oldest finalist since Ken Rosewall in 1968 drilled the net with the last of his 11 errant backhands to give Nadal a 6-2, 6-3, 6-1 win. He looked as relieved to be free of the torment as he did spent in the delivery of his faltering resistance.
Mats Wilander, who lost his title to Noah on the same court in 1983, said on Eurosport: Beating Nadal when he is on form on clay is impossible and again the Spaniard has proved that. I was fortunate enough to win at Roland Garros three times in my career and it was so challenging, physically and mentally. To win 10 times is truly one of sports greatest achievements.
Nadal, who turned 31 eight days ago, is the oldest player man or woman to win 15 slam titles. He is also the oldest champion here in the Open era. He now has Roger Federers tally of 18 majors in his sights but he knows it took the Swiss eight years to add his final three including the last of them, when he was on the other side of the net in Melbourne this year.
That sort of long, late-career run is probably not going to be available to the energetic Spaniard with the boxers footwork and the fencers eye for an opening, whatever the vivacity remaining in his bones. Federer, freakishly and to the astonishment of everyone in the game, returned at 35 from six months out injured to recapture the magic that had made him great, largely because he has expertly managed the physical demands of his sport with a game blessed by angels.
Nevertheless after driving on through the American hardcourt season, Federer avoided the rigours of the clay season. It is possible he will not play at the French Open again. But he is waiting to resume against all of them at Wimbledon, scene of seven of his major triumphs. What a prospect that is.
For Nadal, going off the Tour is not a viable option. Regular play and lights-out tennis keeps him red-lining near his peak. Early in this tournament he said: Its obvious that I am a player that, if I lose the intensity, if I lose the concentration, then my game becomes a normal game. To be different [from my opponents] I need to play with higher intensity than the rest, and I need to play aggressive with my forehand.
For the most part over the past fortnight he has hit his opponents off the court. For the fifth time in his career he reached the final without dropping a set. He gave up 35 games in his seven matches, only three more than Bjorn Borgs 32 in 1978, and allowed Wawrinka just six of those.
Along the way he won his 100th best-of-five-sets match on clay, when he eased past his fellow Spaniard Pablo Carreo Busta in the quarter-finals. He rules this tournament, this surface, this city. There is an argument Ken Rosewall might have won as many or more French Opens had he not been temporarily lost to the amateur game while earning a living on the professional circuit between his first French Open win in 1953 and his second in 1968.
But Nadal brings not only winning skills and habits at both ends of his career, like Rosewall, but something indefinable: an unquenchable enthusiasm for his sport that is frightening. It has deserted him occasionally, usually while injured, but it is back now. He is a champion from a country with no slam tournament, so he has adopted Paris and, in the main, the French have taken to the Mallorcan.
After early jousting in which Wawrinka resembled Candida smiling weakly through crises while imagining he was in the best of all possible worlds, the fourth major final of his career the match clicked into a pattern. Nadal grindingly drove Wawrinka deeper, sapping his power.
When the Swiss went 15-40 down in the ninth game of the second set, he smashed his racket across his knee, as only he can, then drilled a backhand out of court to give Nadal a two-set lead. Wawrinka had won six and lost 27 from two sets down but had lost the last seven of those. There was no chance of reversing the trend.
The concluding set was a cross between Djokovics abject surrender to Thiem in the quarter-finals and Murrays much stiffer fight against Wawrinka in the semi-finals. Nevertheless, he could not find a way past the regal presence opposite him.
It is unlikely Nadal can win on the grass of Wimbledon but tennis is in a volatile state right now. Murray, rested and glad to have Ivan Lendl back, will be better prepared to defend his title than he was even a couple of weeks ago but doubts remain about Djokovic, who is without a coach and nobody can be sure if Federer has another miracle in him. Into that mix now goes Nadal. It is a scenario that might not have occurred to him before he arrived in his adopted capital.
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