How Rafael Nadal broke tennis math: Titles, stats, and more

Rafael Nadal broke math. That is the best compliment I can possibly think to give to an athlete in any sport.

Numbers are how I make sense of the world. Through them, you can come to understand how a game is played and what matters the most within it. Each sport has its statistical guidelines, its must-win categories and its unbreakable records. And throughout what will end up going down as about a 23-year career, as Roger Federer was breaking geometry and Novak Djokovic was breaking the laws of flexibility and fitness — and Andy Murray, pushing so hard to reach the top of the sport, ended up breaking himself — Nadal made absolute nonsense out of the numbers that define tennis.

Nadal will retire in the coming days, weeks or months. He has committed to playing in the Laver Cup this fall. He has suggested he is hoping to participate in the Paris Olympics this summer in some capacity. We don’t know where the end will come, exactly, but for every tournament he enters, he’s almost certainly doing so for the last time. And with the French Open starting Sunday, that means that the greatest clay-courter of all time, who has won at Roland Garros an utterly impossible 14 times, is playing there for the last time, too. It makes me want to reflect a bit.

And that means talking about numbers.

Forehand domination

You’d love to hit more winners than your opponent. Suffer fewer errors. Land more unreturnable first serves. But while tennis’ most prevalent statistics mostly track how points ended, tennis players are far more concerned with how points are constructed. That can mean moving your opponent around as much as possible, or targeting your opponent’s weaknesses, whatever they might be. But at a macro level, point construction can often simply mean setting yourself up to hit more forehands than your opponent. Even if your backhand is excellent, and even if your forehand is merely average, the backhand is still a more awkward stroke, and it usually behooves you to manipulate the court in a way that keeps you swinging from the forehand side.

Nadal was never the biggest hitter or most aggressive player on tour. His serve speed never went too far beyond 110 mph. Whereas a big server such as Andy Roddick or Pete Sampras would hit aces about 13-15% of…