Tennis: Who will replace Rafael Nadal as the master of clay?
Summary
For two decades, tennis' clay court season was dominated by one person. With Nadal's retirement, that gaping hole might never be filled
On 25 May, the opening day of the 2025 French Open, the year’s second Grand Slam tournament will pay tribute to Rafael Nadal on the Philippe-Chatrier court, its organisers announced last week.
Nadal, who won 14 singles titles at the Roland Garros, had an astonishing win-loss record of 112-4 over two decades. He extended his career towards the end, suffering through a series of injuries and long recovery periods, just so he could win one more title in Paris. Perhaps he felt that 15 would have been a good number to end at.
He didn’t, losing in the first-round last year, which brought an end to his long, unique connection with the tournament. So strong is that connection that the Paris Olympics last year made him a torch-bearer for the event even though he is a Spaniard.
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The same, perhaps, goes for Roland Garros, which is finding it difficult to let go of a man who dominated its red clay courts for a decade. Not just those two weeks, but the preceding several weeks when tennis moves into its clay court phase, as tournament after tournament across Europe is played on the surface. Over these weeks, for about 20 years, Nadal was the defining figure in tennis, even if his career coincided with two other great players, who were cast into the shadows for just that period.
In the absence of Nadal in 2025, clay-court tennis is missing its most pivotal name.
After last year’s loss to Alexander Zverev, a player Nadal had beaten in the 2022 French Open semi-finals (Zverev retired hurt) en route to his last title at the venue, Nadal said that he might yet come back to play at the venue. But by November of last year, he announced that he was retiring from the sport.
That first-round result may not have been unexpected, considering Nadal had not been fit enough for some time but hanging on to hope and a miracle. For the Roland Garros faithful, so used to seeing the Spaniard dominate, hustle, brawl and bulldoze his way to one title after another, it was a tragic end.
But the kind of domination Nadal had on clay makes his absence notable as the clay-court season gathers speed. The field is wider open now, with no single player owning the narrative as he did.
The first major clay court tournament on the men’s tour, an ATP 1000 event, was the Monte-Carlo Masters, which Carlos Alcaraz won on 13 April. Madrid this week and Rome from 7 May follow, interspersed with smaller events at Barcelona, Munich, Hamburg, Geneva, all on outdoor clay, leading up to the French Open.
On his first appearance at the French Open in 2005, Nadal, who had grown up playing on the clay courts of Spain, won the title. He beat Federer in the semi-final, dropped just three sets in the tournament. He had already, at age 19, entered the tournament as one of the favourites, having won at Monte Carlo, Madrid and Rome in the lead-up to the French Open.
His record on clay courts is the best (with a win percentage of 90.5%) in the professional era of men’s tennis, according to the ATP (Association of Tennis Professionals). During this time, Nadal won 484 and lost just 51 ATP matches on clay, 63 of his 92 career titles came on the surface.
“He makes you suffer. First he takes your legs, then your mind," once said Casper Ruud, who lost to Nadal in the 2022 French Open final.
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There is no obvious male successor to Nadal on clay. Alcaraz is the leading one, following up his title in Monte-Carlo with the final of the Barcelona Open on 20 April. Holger Rune beat him in the final on a court ironically named Pista Rafa Nadal in 2017, in honour of the player who won here 12 times. The loss prevented the Spaniard Alcaraz from emulating Nadal, who was the last to win back-to-back Monte-Carlo-Barcelona titles in 2018.
“The great thing, we saw last year, was that he (Alcaraz) is so good on the natural surface because he’s such an incredible athlete," ESPN commentator Renne Stubbs said ahead of this year’s Australian Open in February over an online media conference. “To see him play on clay and then turn around and play so beautifully on grass, which are two different moving styles, but it shows you how good he is as a natural athlete as far as moving."
Alcaraz’s immediate rival, world No.1, Jannik Sinner, does not favour clay so much. Ruud is a natural on clay, has been to the French Open finals twice and semi-finals once in the last three years. Djokovic, now on his last legs, is one of only three men to have beaten Nadal at Roland Garros. One of the others to do so is Zverev, who has made it to the semi-finals in Paris for the last four years and just won his third straight title on Munich’s clay courts. With a win percentage of 76, Stefanos Tsitsipas, who has slipped down to 16 in rankings, does best on clay compared to other surfaces.
However, none of these players have it in them to build a Nadal-like domination given the number of years they have already spent on the tour.
Younger players like Brazil’s Joao Fonseca, 18, and Czech Jakub Mensik, 19, are just making their breakthroughs, miles away from leaving indelible marks on the surface. This year, Fonseca just won his first title, in Buenos Aires, on clay while Mensik got his first, in Miami on a hard court, beating Djokovic in the final.
Nadal’s successor on clay—though she has a long way to go before she gets even close—is most likely Iga Swiatek, who has won three of the last four French Opens and was undefeated on the surface in 2022. Last year, the 23-year-old won all tournaments on the surface except one. She has played 100 career matches on clay and won 89 of them.
The next ruler of clay could well be its queen.
Arun Janardhan is a Mumbai-based journalist who covers sports, business leaders and lifestyle.
