Ten Years Ago...

Rafael Nadal took the clay season by storm. His dominance on this surface is unquestionable and this record can be broken down in several ways.

We could just break it down by his winning streak, which he started at 19, or his total number of titles. It should be noted, many of these titles occurred consecutively for a record number of times as well. I could spend quite a bit of time listing these records (something I thoroughly enjoy) or just have you look up his list of career achievements and count the number of times you read stands alone.

The distribution of this record tells quite the story. The first thing anyone notices about this distribution is the number of matches played and titles on clay in 2005. If you examine 2005 closely, Nadal’s rise levels off at No. 2 in the world. Each bump illustrates the rise in rank due to 8 clay court titles (pink) and 3 hard court titles (green) he won, as well as reaching the final at Miami. Once he reached this rank, he dropped the number of clay court tournaments and stayed level for quite a while with exception to his comeback after 7 months of injury in 2013. It is clear that he maintained this dominance on clay for the last 10 years.

However, fans via social media, writers, and commentators continue to mention Nadal’s 3 losses and 1 minor title on clay this year. How does this compare to other years? Typically, Nadal averages 1–2 losses on clay by the end of the year and has around 4 clay court titles. The clay court season is no where near done. Now, the ebb and flow of his dominance is clear if you compare his injury timing to his peak titles. However, this time Nadal has not bounced back as quickly (i.e. 2013 aka the year of brilliance). His losses, while still few, came much earlier in tournaments than anticipated. But should we actually panic?

If you consider the frequency of the losses, then it does raise an eyebrow because Nadal’s dominance on clay is slowly disappearing, as illustrated by the decrease in consecutive wins between losses. However, after a serious monopoly on clay court titles, this really does not surprise me. So the real question to consider: has anything in Nadal’s game changed significantly?

It is hard for me to remember a time when anyone could break Nadal’s service game so easily. Even more surprising is the decline in his ability to break his opponent’s serve. It is not like he does not get the opportunity: he’s currently averaging 9 break point chances per match. But if you graph the average fraction of break points saved and converted and compare it to his own averages, it is clear this is the first year he is below both of his own averages (70% break points saved and 53% break points converted). Also, if you just look at these statistics from 2010 until present day, there is a clear declining trend. Now, there are a couple of ways to interpret this trend but if I rely on pure definition, the two most important things for saving and converting break points should be serve and return, respectively.

The distributions above describe Nadal’s serve and return. The decade average is under the key for each parameters. Looking at the trends from the averaged annual data, there has been a very small decrease in Nadal’s ability to hit a first serve in and win second serve points. If he gets his first serve in, he has remained fairly consistent in his service game.

For his return game, his second serve return has remained fairly consistent, which I found surprising. Instead, his first serve return has decreased slightly. Perhaps, by the end of the clay season, we will get a more complete picture, but on average, there is not a huge shift to explain why there has been a change in break points. The only conclusion I can make is he is less consistent, and this is when you say:

Well, duh. Now what?

However, if I consider individual losses, the differences become much clearer. In all of his losses, Nadal just performed below average on all counts. His ability to defend his own service game completely diminished, specifically because of his 2nd serve, and he could not capitalize on break point opportunities to bring the game back on equal terms. He won the lower end of total points in these matches, in which he could not win more that 50% of the return points. These losses, while more frequent over the last two years, are just poor individual performances in those particular matches. All of this will be key for winning the big prize:

The point of all these numbers was to look at the big picture and address two major questions. First, should we panic about these losses? I am not panicking yet. Nadal has two major tournaments left on clay before the grand slam. On average, he has not performed terribly but during those losses, every aspect of his game suffered. He stated many times in press conferences that he needs to capitalize on the break chances and needs to find his confidence and rhythm. All of this is evident.

Second, will Rafael Nadal win Roland Garros for a 10th time? You will just have to check back in a couple of weeks for the next tennis note where I will map out the last couple of French Open finals visually, by the numbers.