Nadal buries Ferrer to etch French Open history

The embattled Ferrer started to bleed when he went down two break points in the sixth game. Yet again, the gritty little beast summoned another dose of resilience to battle back to deuce. Clearly though, Ferrer was short on ammunition, and it was all he could do to prevent Nadal from breaking. A forehand winner left Nadal serving for the set at 5-1.

There was barely anything that Ferrer could do to halt the Nadal juggernaut, but a brief interruption for some deranged streaker unsettled the great champion. The world No. 3 surrendered serve, but settled his nerves quickly to break Ferrer and take the second set. Nadal was beginning to assume proportion with each passing moment and Ferrer was looking like a theatre artist who stumbled in to the wrong stage.

At the beginning of the third set, even as rain drops continued to spray the court, Nadal threatened to run away with the match when he broke to take a 2-0 lead with a fiercely struck forehand down the line winner. However, Ferrer fought on gamely to rustle Nadal, taking eight of the next nine points to stay even at 2-2. It was a final piece of resistance from the vain warrior, who held serve to remain even at 3-3.

Ferrer could only maintain his intensity for so long and Nadal broke it in the eighth game to edge closer to a place hitherto unseen by a man wielding a tennis racket. Six men – four before the open era and two in recent memory had dominated a grand slam enough to win it seven times. Richard Sears, Bill Larned and Bill Tilden at the US Open and William Renshaw, Pete Sampras and Roger Federer at Wimbledon had achieved the accolade of winning seventh titles at a single grand slam event.

Nadal had joined that illustrious club last year when he surpassed Bjorn Borg as the man with the most French Open titles. A service winner gave Nadal two match points for an unprecedented eighth French Open title. The unassailable Spaniard needed just one, as he struck a thumping forehand winner to claim a momentous victory before collapsing on the court in a delirious heap. The historic victory helped Nadal emulate Roy Emerson, who also won an impressive twelve grand slam titles. Only Pete Sampras with 14 and Roger Federer with 17 are ahead on the relentless path of Nadal’s pursuit for grand slam glory.

The greatest irony about Monday, even as the world celebrates yet another coronation for their affable King, is that Nadal will drop to world No. 5 and Ferrer will take the 4th rank. In the past few weeks since his iconic comeback, Nadal has beaten Federer, Djokovic and now Ferrer for the 20th time in his career. Irrespective of what the rankings might indicate, it needs no complex analytics to understand the best man in tennis at this moment.

Since his comeback in February, Nadal has reached the finals of each of the nine tournaments he has played in and won seven of those titles – including his 24th ATP Masters Series title and the 12th grand slam title of his monumental career. There is no need any more to foretell the sense of trepidation that will fill the air when the marauder from Mallorca reaches the leafy south west suburb of Wimbledon near London, a fortnight from now.