A lot was familiar, and a little was new, in Nadal's win over Thiem

There was a good deal that was familiar, and a little that was new, in Rafael Nadal’s 6-3, 6-4, 6-0 win over Dominic Thiem at Roland Garros on Friday.

Let’s start with the new.

Nadal had played three tough matches against Thiem this spring. He had won the first two, in the Barcelona and Madrid finals, but there was a sense that the Austrian was creeping closer to him, and he proved that sense to be correct when he beat Rafa in straight sets in Rome. In that match, and in his five straight-set wins in Paris, Thiem had pushed his opponents off the baseline and given himself a chance to dominate with his 90-m.p.h. forehand from all over the court. He had even dominated Novak Djokovic in the quarterfinals.

What was Rafa’s answer to that seemingly daunting problem? Early on, he added a wrinkle to his own baseline attack: the down-the-line backhand. This isn’t usually part of the Rafa playbook, and it surprised Thiem. It also forced him to hit defensive backhands, and kept him from sitting on his forehand side and waiting to pound that shot. Up 4-2 in the first, Nadal won two points with down-the-line backhands and held at love.

Along with that backhand wrinkle, Nadal added something extra to his serve. Following new coach Carlos Moya’s advice, Rafa has varied his service locations more this year than he ever had in the past. And through this spring, his serve has been a more important part of his winning formula on clay than it has been in the past. That proved to be true again on Friday. Up a break at 3-1 in the first set, but down 15-40, Nadal came up with three service winners to hold. Down two more break points at 0-1 in the second set, Rafa did the same thing: He saved one with a service winner, saved another with a wicked wide swinger into the ad court and held with an ace.

A Rafael Nadal with a bailout serve is a losing proposition for any opponent, and by the end of the second set Thiem knew it. This is where the match began to look like so many best-of-five Nadal matches from the past. Forced to hit for winners from deep in the court and high above his shoulders, Thiem, who had won 15 straight sets coming in, began to misfire. The forehands that had been finding the corners were landing five feet long. The backhands that had been lasered for winners were catching the tape. Thiem’s hangdog resignation told us that, future of the men’s game or not, he had gone as far as he could go against Nadal’s brick wall of resolve on this day. He wasn’t the first.

Thiem tried too hard from the start to hit through Nadal. He cranked every forehand as hard as he could, but didn’t have the patience to move Rafa off the court with angles. In the second and third sets, Thiem also made a tactical error with his serve. When he has a break point in the ad court, Nadal’s forehand tends to tighten up when he faces a slow-moving second serve. Instead of going there, Thiem sent his second serve into Rafa’s backhand both times. Both times Nadal won the point and broke.

After this familiar-looking victory, Rafa is back in a familiar place: the French Open final. This will be his 10th, and he has yet to lose one. At Roland Garros in 2017, he hasn’t lost more than four games in a set and has dropped just 29 games overall. A Rafael Nadal with a bailout serve and a damage-doing down-the-line backhand is a difficult proposition indeed.