There is a certain tendency in recent years to point out the Nadal-Federer like the tennis classic, probably because of the memory of colossal battles, like that Spanish assault on the Swiss garden in the legendary Wimbledon final in 2008, or because of the boiling point that the landing of an irreverent young man of 19 years who dared to successfully discuss the throne of the considered greatest. There is a certain tendency also to proclaim Federer as number one of history, but it really remains to be seen. The game is not over. To begin with, Roger has an unfavorable face to face with his two contemporary rivals, Nadal and Djokovic. Its big slab. And this same Sunday, if the Balearic Islands rose his 13th Roland Garros, would tie with the Swiss in the pinnacle of Grand Slam titles, with 20.
He Nadal-Federer has been contested 40 times, with a balance in favor of Rafa of 24-16, but, although they add a very high figure, seasoned by a rivalry of the time, they are much less than the 55 Nadal-Djokovic duels, the most repeated match in tennis history. The true classic. In this case, Nole has the direct confrontations in his locker, 29-26, although things change if the data is broken down by surfaces. On the clay, which is the one that concerns us, Nadal dumps the digits to his side, 17-7, of which they are 6-1 at Roland Garros. The dominance on clay corresponds to Nadal, but neither should we trust, nor blindly surrender to the statistics. The data always shows multiple prisms. Since 2013, for example, the scale is even on the ground: 5-5. Also, the antecedents are turned over and over again by the crude present. This final is different from all the previous ones: in autumn, with cold, with hard balls, with hardly any audience, with another year in the legs, with little shooting during the course … They are number one and two in the world. And everything can happen.