The trials and determination of Nadal’s record 12th French Open victory

The Match:

The first set was a classic Nadal grind. For most of the set, Thiem managed to stay with Nadal but Nadal turned on the aggression at the key moments. He broke back Thiem in the sixth game with a scorching forehand winner to end a 14-shot rally and then saved a break point in the next game with an unreturned serve. He then broke Thiem forcing an error at the net. Nadal took the opening set 6-3.

Yet, not all was so rosy. A closer look into the stats revealed that Nadal and Thiem were neck and neck in the 9+ shot rallies and Thiem was winning the majority of the baseline points.

In the second set, both Thiem and Nadal served better and neither had many chances on the other’s serve. It all shook up in the 12th game when at 15-30 on Nadal’s serve, Thiem won two consecutive rallies of more than 10 shots to take the set. It was a reward for the steely performance that Thiem had shown until then.

It’s not often that you say this but Rafael Nadal was being outmatched from the baseline. In the first two sets, Nadal won only 45% of rallies of more than 9 shots(13/29) and he won only 42%(33/78) of the baseline points. Add to that, Dominic Thiem made a quite stunning 0 unforced errors off his backhand wing in the second set.

All this meant that, for 2 hours, Nadal had stuck with his favorite strategies and they had not yielded favorable results. Thiem had come prepared for the baseline duels and he was winning them.