No. 7, 2011: Nadal ends a difficult match with del Potro, as well as a trying season, with Davis Cup glory

As 36-year-old Rafael Nadal ramps up for what may be his final swing through the clay courts of Europe, we look back at the 10 matches that made him the undisputed King of Clay.

• MATCH 1: 2003 Monte Carlo, second round: Nadal d. Costa, 7-5, 6-3
• MATCH 2:
• MATCH 3:
• MATCH 4: 2005 Roland Garros, semifinal: Nadal d. Federer, 6-3, 4-6, 6-4, 6-3
• MATCH 5:
• MATCH 6:

MATCH 7: 2011 Davis Cup, final: Nadal d. Juan Martin del Potro, 1-6, 6-4, 6-1, 7-6 (0)

I knew it was my day, my moment, and I had to believe more than ever.

By Nadal’s lofty standards, 2011 was a down year for him. Yes, he won Roland Garros for a sixth time, tying Bjorn Borg’s men’s Open era record. Yes, he went 69-15 and earned $7 million. But this was also a season when Novak Djokovic took many of Rafa’s most prize possessions, including the No. 1 ranking, and the Wimbledon and US Open crowns he had won in 2010. Most shocking of all, Djokovic had even taken two of the clay-court titles that seemed to be Nadal’s by birthright, Madrid and Rome.

By that fall, Rafa was 0-5 against Djokovic in 2011, and his confidence had begun to flag against other opponents as well. He lost a 6-0 third set to Andy Murray in Tokyo, then went out early in Shanghai and at the ATP Finals in London, where he endured the most one-sided loss of his career to Roger Federer, 6-3, 6-0.

The bright spot was Davis Cup. Nadal was 4-0 for Spain coming into the final, and he had a chance to end the season on a high note in Seville, where he would lead his nation against Argentina, and 27,000 fans, in the same Olympic Stadium where he had beaten Andy Roddick seven years earlier.

But where the Rafa of 2004 was filled with a youthful determination to prove himself, the Rafa of 2011 was a man searching for his form and only intermittently finding it. He had no trouble with Juan Monaco in his first singles match on Friday, but on Sunday he had to go up against a Top 10 opponent in Juan Martin Del Potro. To say that Nadal started slowly was something of an understatement. He lost the first set 6-1, went down an immediate break in the second, and struggled to get his best shot, his forehand, past the service line. After 10 games, Rafa had managed to hit just three winners.

But this was Davis Cup, this was one of the biggest and loudest home crowds he would ever play in front of, and this was what he and his teammates had worked for since February. Most of all, this was clay. Nadal had no choice but to find a way.

“I knew it was my day, my moment, and I had to believe more than ever,” Nadal said. “I had really tough moments in the match, but I was all the time believing in myself to try to win.”

Nadal’s moment came after he was broken to start the second set. With his forehand misfiring, he leaned on his backhand, and in particular his crosscourt backhand pass, to do the job. When he broke back for 1-1, he brought himself and the Spanish fans into the match for the first time.

“Finally I find something very important,” he said. “The second game of the second set, [breaking back] in that game gave me a lot. So after that game, I felt the match started for me.”

Taking things one step at a time, building confidence little by little, “finding solutions,” as he likes to say: These have been Nadal’s methods for digging himself out of slumps his entire career, and they served him well against del Potro. In the fourth set, he came back from 3-5 down, and broke the Argentine when he served for the set. This time, it was his old reliable—the forehan—that got him over the line. He broke Delpo with a forehand pass, broke him again with another forehand winner, and closed out the match, and the Davis Cup, with a final forehand winner to complete a 7-0 tiebreaker. (Watch below.)

This was Spain’s fifth Cup win, the fourth since Nadal joined the team, and the first that he had clinched on his racquet. It would also be the team’s last for eight years. When Rafa’s game needed it most, clay had come to his rescue, and he proven to be the king of it once again.

“Today it was my turn to decide a final,” he said. “the feeling is very special.”