20-time winner of Grand Slam titles Rafael Nadal is now universally recognized as the true King of clay Rafa has won 13 French Open with 100 hits out of 102 races and is proudly the owner of almost all tournament records clay, the first surface where the Majorcan started to really make a name for himself.
Despite this there is a record on clay-courts that the Spanish tennis player will probably never beat. Rafa has won a large number of titles in the three main tournaments on clay: he won, as we have reiterated, 13 Roland Garros, then nine Internazionali d’Italia in Rome and five titles at the Madrid tournament.
Given the statistics and numbers, everything would suggest that Rafael Nadal is the tennis player with the most victories in history on clay but in reality this is not the case.
Rafael Nadal and a particular record
In the 1970s, a South American tennis legend like Guillermo Vilas hit incredible numbers with 681 wins on clay surface courts and a respectable 79% win rate.
Compared to Vilas Nadal is really far behind with only 445 wins and at the age of almost 35, Rafa will hardly be able to overcome these incredible numbers. Among other things, Nadal is third in this particular ranking given that in second place is Manuel Orantes, second to 569 wins on clay.
With the passing years Rafa should play at least another 6 years, winning between 30 and 40 matches on clay, a difficult undertaking even for a phenomenon of his caliber. On the other hand, it seems more plausible that the Iberian champion could overtake Orantes and thus become the second most successful tennis player on clay.
Also in the 2020 season Rafael Nadal proved all his worth on clay as he won his thirteenth Roland Garros, which, despite the particular conditions, dominated by winning without losing a set and destroying world number one Novak Djokovic in the final.
The greatests tennis stars on the planet, like Novak Djokovic, Rafael Nadal, Andy Murray, Serena Williams, Naomi Osaka, Ashleigh Barty, Simona Halep and all the others, will come back for the upcoming Australian Open 2021, which will be held in Melbourne from 8 February: it will be the most awaited sports event of the first part of the new season.
It will be a very spectacualr season, and all of us hope without the problems of the last one, with some presence of the crowd in the courts across the world. Roger Federer, after he said he will not play the Australian Slam, should come back on the court, for the joy of his fans, at the end of February or at the beginning of March.
The new season has yet to begin but there is already a desire to put a disastrous 2020 behind us from all points of view and start the new year with the first Grand Slam of the year in the hope that the pandemic can slowly regress and bring back the planet to live seriously and also allow the world of sport to perform in front of the general crowd.
