
The French Open may be over for another year, but Roland-Garros will always belong to Rafael Nadal, its all-time champion.
Rafael Nadal will always be regarded as one of tennis’s greatest players. He turned professional in 2001, aged 14, and retired in 2024. He won 92 Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) singles titles, 22 of them in Grand Slam events. He won the French Championship, known as Roland-Garros, 14 times. In 116 contests at Roland-Garros, he only lost four matches. He withdrew from the 2016 championship after the second round due to a wrist injury.
Sports journalist Christopher Clarey maintains that Nadal’s 14 victories at Roland-Garros constitute ‘a sports outlier’, a conspicuous example of ‘enduring, outrageous individual dominance at a recurring event’. Clarey was at Roland-Garros in 2005 when Nadal won his first French Open, has witnessed his other victories, and the odd loss, over the subsequent years. He writes:
I wanted it [Nadal’s French Open record] to be the principal focus of this book, the lens through which to view his life and career. I also wanted to go deep on Roland-Garros, the place where he defined himself and redefined the boundaries of dominance.
Clarey employs a chronological approach to Nadal’s tennis career, focusing on his exploits at the French Open, juxtaposed with a broader historical analysis of French tennis, events associated with the development of Roland-Garros as a tennis venue, and the champion players who have graced its courts. These different chapters are integrated with comments concerning tennis at both an organisational level (other Grand Slams, ATP and other tournaments, such as the Davis Cup and Olympic Games), other players (including famous female players), and more technical aspects associated with tennis (different types of courts and their construction and maintenance, tennis rackets, the bounce of the ball, and so on).
Nadal was born on 3 June 1986 in Manacor on the island of Mallorca, Spain. He first started hitting tennis balls when he was three with his uncle Toni Nadal, a tennis coach. He had another uncle, Miguel Angel Nadal, who had a distinguished football career with Mallorca, Barcelona and the Spanish national team. By the time Nadal was five, uncle Toni saw something in the youngster’s hitting that convinced him that he could have a successful tennis career. Clarey maintains that a large part of Nadal’s success can be linked to the fact that he has always had the support of his family and been based in Manacor. His wife comes from Manacor and lives there now.
One of Clarey’s major themes is how humble and down to earth Nadal is. He is not a prima donna and is courteous and friendly to various people in the tennis world. He usually apologises to those that he defeats, and congratulates those who beat him. He thanks behind-the-scenes staff in the locker room for their help, often going out of his way to shake hands. Clarey points out that Nadal has never thrown or broken a racket in frustration during his career.
Early in The Warrior Clarey quotes two lines from Rudyard Kipling’s poem If that are displayed above the players’ entrance to the Centre Court at Wimbledon:
If you can meet with triumph and disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same.
Clarey sees these lines as a key component of Nadal’s make-up and contentment with life, not just his tennis career. Uncle Toni impressed on him the importance of practice and struggle. All you can do is your best. You will experience success and adversity. Adversity will involve pain, having to deal with injuries. Nadal was always on a quest of self-improvement, to get better, to work out ways to solve problems that occur on the tennis court. He wasn’t concerned with records, with whether he had more tournaments or Grand Slams than other players; he just wanted to get the best out of himself.
Nadal was a tall player. A natural right-hander, he played tennis with his left hand. He perfected a powerful forehand with lots of high bouncing top spin. Right-handers (well, really everyone) found these shots difficult to defend, especially on their backhand. The hardest shot to defend is the high ball that bounces into the armpit of your playing hand. Nadal was always focused on the point he was playing. Clarey points out that there were never any easy points with Nadal. You had to produce your best to beat him. A match was never over until the last point was won.
As he works his way through Nadal’s French Open victories, Clarey delves into his rivalries with two other tennis legends, Roger Federer and Novak Djokovic. All three players have the highest respect for each other. Clarey provides fascinating accounts of their matches. Nadal was Federer’s master on the clay courts of Roland-Garros. His lifetime record against Federer is 24 to 16. Djokovic beat Nadal twice at Roland-Garros. Djokovic was the only player who defeated him in more games than he won – 31 to 29! To complete this triangle, Djokovic outpointed Federer 27 to 23.
In 2009, Nadal was beaten in the fourth round of the French Open by the Swedish player Robin Soldering. It was regarded as one of the greatest upsets in the history of the French Open. Several weeks earlier, Nadal had beaten Soldering 6-1, 6-0 in Rome. Clarey amusingly reports that ‘His loss to Soldering had proven that Nadal [winning the French Open] was not quite as inevitable as death or taxes.’ As Soldering’s chances of winning improved during the match, Clarey reports that Soldering said, ‘I tried to think, “Don’t think”.’ Clarey explains the rationale behind this need to not think.
In the mind game that is tennis, that is so much harder than it sounds. Considering the implications of an upset is often the beginning of the end of an upset. And whatever you do don’t seek refuge in focusing on technique. That will gum up the works and tighten the arm. Prioritize the process, not the destination. Keep your eyes on the strings between points. Then focus on hitting the targets again and again (and again).
The 1920s were a glorious period for French tennis. Suzanne Lenglen was a tennis sensation, one of the first superstars of the sport. She dominated women’s tennis before World War I and into the 1920s, winning eight Grand Slam titles. She had an aggressive, balletic style of play. In 1926 she turned professional for US$50,000 for a two-year tour of America.
Then there were the four Musketeers (les Mousquetaries) – Jean Borotra, Jacques Brugnon, Henri Cochet and Rene Lacoste. Amongst other things, they defeated America in the 1927 Davis Cup. France would defend the Cup in 1928. French tennis authorities didn’t believe that they had an appropriate venue to stage the Cup. A suitable place was found and one of the financers of the venue wanted it to be named after a famous French aviator, Roland Garros, who had fought and died in World War I. And so the new venue was named. A hyphen has been inserted between his two names (Roland-Garros) following the French grammatical tradition of inserting a hyphen when a place or event is named after an individual.
In 2023 Roland-Garros honoured Nadal by erecting a statue to honour his achievement of 14 French Open victories. He did not compete in that year’s tournament due to injury. He competed in 2024 and was knocked out in the first round, his fourth loss at Roland Garros. He retired later in the year, aged 38.
Rafael Nadal had a spectacular tennis career. It was a career without scandal. The only criticism Clarey makes of him is his decision to become an employee of the Royal Saudi Tennis Federation.
This was not a good look … It seemed unnecessarily mercenary for Nadal, with his sparkling public image and generational wealth … The Saudis [were] justly accused of using sports to deflect attention from their nation’s woeful human rights record.
Clarey interviewed Nadal following his retirement. Nadal told him:
‘I will have the personal satisfaction that I had a good attitude, respect for sport, respect for my rivals. That I had a good relationship with all those who work in this tennis world, and that I was a fighter who pushed to get over injuries and difficult moments. I have the satisfaction that I conducted myself well on and off the court and that while behaving correctly I gave all I had to reach my goals. If I didn’t do it, it’s because my rivals were able to do it, and I wasn’t good enough. The only thing that gives me personal and big satisfaction and happiness is knowing that I pushed myself to try to get the most out of myself.’
Christopher Clarey’s The Warrior: Rafael Nadal and his kingdom of clay is a masterful account of a supreme tennis player and the world of tennis that he inhabited. He is an author who is at the top of his craft, taking us into many nooks and crannies of Nadal’s tennis career and the broader tennis milieu. He writes beautifully and has a supreme feel for and knowledge of the game of tennis, both on and off the court. He has received several awards for the excellence of his tennis writing. In 2021 he published The Master: The long run and beautiful game of Roger Federer. I guess all he needs to do now is finish the trilogy by producing a biography of ‘The Joker’, Novak Djokovic.
Christopher Clarey The Warrior: Rafael Nadal and his kingdom of clay John Murray 2025 PB 368pp $34.99
Braham Dabscheck is a Senior Fellow at the Melbourne Law School at the University of Melbourne who writes on industrial relations, sport and other things.
You can buy The Warrior from Abbey’s at a 10% discount by quoting the promotion code NEWTOWNREVIEW.
You can also check if it is available from Newtown Library.If you’d like to help keep the Newtown Review of Books a free and independent site for book reviews, please consider making a donation. Your support is greatly appreciated.
Tags: Christopher | Clarey, French Open, Novak Djokovic, Rafael Nadal, Roger Federer, Roland-Garros, tennis champions
Discover more from Newtown Review of Books
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.