King of Clay Nadal wins 9th French Open as Djokovic fades

Rafa Nadal has done it again. He has won the French Open for the ninth time in a tournament in which he is all but invincible.

Who can stop Rafa on clay? No one it would seem. He only dropped two sets all tournament – including the first in today’s final against Novak Djokovic.

Djokovic took the set 6-3 after coming out of the traps the faster of the two, giving him hope of reclaiming the number one spot and completing his collection of Grand Slams. It all looked so easy and with the winner of the first set normally going on to win in Roland Garros finals it was a good omen for the Serb.

It was probably Djokovic’s best chance to inflict on Nadal only his second defeat at Roland Garros. Whilst Nadal has beaten Djokovic 22 times to the Serb’s 19 wins the Spaniard has a far superior head-head in the Slams of 9-3 and 6-0 in Paris. But Nadal had won their previous four encounters, including the final on the clay of Rome last month.

But Nadal came back strongly in the second set, after a break each he broke again at 6-5 to take the set 7-5.

Then Nadal seemed to find another gear to take the third 6-2. Despite some flashes of brilliance Djokovic could never quite get back into the match, and Nadal took the fourth set – and the match- fairly comfortably to win 6-4 and take his 14^th Grand Slam title. He truly is The King of Clay.