Au Revoir, Rafa
A few notes before we get to the tennis…
If you ordered an early signed and inscribed copy of WHY WE LOVE FOOTBALL from the folks at Quail Ridge Books, you should have received your super-special bonus on Monday: the full introduction as it will be published in September! I hope you preorder folks are enjoying that. If you, too, would like to get a super-early sneak peek at the introduction, well, you have until June 16, which is Father’s Day! Just preorder the book, tell me what you want to inscribe, and then gmail me the receipt. I’ll send out the next batch the week of Father’s Day, so… if you’re buying the book for your dad, you can print out the introduction and gift it as a little book preview!
More Father’s Day fun: If you order WHY WE LOVE BASEBALL from Porchlight by June 1—that’s this Saturday—you can get the book at 25% off and also get a signed bookplate. That seems like a pretty good gift, too!
If you’re in the Charlotte area, I’ll be doing an event this Sunday, June 2, at the Southpark Library with the marvelous Kimmery Martin. The whole thing sounds like it will be a lot of fun. Tickets are $50, but that will include charcuterie and cocktails and all sorts of other goodies.
I only met Bill Walton two times, once to talk about his incredible NCAA Final performance, and once to talk about the 1986 Celtics. He was as kind as you would expect. Very few people as famous as Walton are as universally loved. Rest in peace.
On the surface, Rafael Nadal’s possible final match at the French Open on Monday was a relatively run-of-the-mill, 6-3, 7-6, 6-3 first-round victory for Alexander Zverev. Nadal did create a few complications for Zverev, but all in all, this didn’t veer too far from a typical match where the No. 4 player in the world wears down and eventually overmatches a feisty world’s No. 275. The match lasted three hours and five minutes… about 20 minutes longer than it took Zverev to beat a South African player named Lloyd Harris in last year’s first round.
Of course, there was nothing typical about this match… because this was Rafa Nadal and this was the French Open, and there hasn’t been a Paris pairing quite like it since Rick and Ilsa. It’s funny: People have been arguing for a decade about the greatest player in tennis history. Novak Djokovic seems to have worn down the consensus with his inescapable barrage of victories, but Roger Federer fans will still be heard, Rod Laver fans, Pete Sampras fans, Serena Williams fans, Steffi Graf fans, Martina Navratilova fans, maybe even some Bjorn Borg fans.
But absolutely, no one would argue against Nadal as the greatest clay courter who ever lived. The mere numbers tell enough of the story—he came in having won 14 French Opens with a 112-3 record in Paris. He has also won Monte Carlo 11 times, Rome nine times and Madrid five times.
Check this out: Nadal’s clay court record against the only other men to win multiple grand slams in his era—that would be Djokovic, Federer, Andy Murray and Stan Wawrinka—is an almost inconceivable 49-13. Djokovic is the only one of the four to beat Nadal on clay over five sets.
Nadal’s particular kind of dominance forges an interesting question: