Rafael Nadal: 22 stats for his 22nd Grand Slam title

Imagine being the one out of 128 players in the draw holding the trophy in the end—now imagine doing that 22 times at Grand Slams, and 14 times alone at Roland Garros. That’s exactly where Rafael Nadal is at after his latest triumph in Paris.

Here are 22 things the Spanish legend achieved in the French capital this year:

He extended his all-time men’s record for most Roland Garros titles. It was his 14th time lifting the Coupe des Mousquetaires—Bjorn Borg has the next-most with six.

He extended his all-time men’s record for most Grand Slam titles. It was his 22nd—Roger Federer and Novak Djokovic are tied for the next-most with 20 each.

He became the oldest men’s champion in the history of Roland Garros. At 36, he surpassed the record of Andres Gimeno, who won it as a 34-year-old in 1972.

He’s now won more than a third of the Grand Slams he’s ever played. He’s played 64 majors in his career and he’s now lifted the trophy at 22 of them—or 34.4%.

He improved to 22-8 in his career in Grand Slam finals. By major that’s 2-4 at the Australian Open, 14-0 at Roland Garros (!), 2-3 at Wimbledon and 4-1 at the US Open.

He’s now won eight of his last nine Grand Slam finals. In the last five years, his only loss in a major final came at the 2019 Australian Open to Djokovic.

He’s now won 23 of his last 26 overall ATP finals. Since the start of the 2017 clay-court season, his only three losses in finals came to Federer (Shanghai in 2017), Djokovic (Australian Open in 2019) and Taylor Fritz (Indian Wells this year).

This was the first time he’s ever won Roland Garros while seeded outside the Top 4. He’s won it three times as the No. 1 seed, seven times as the No. 2 seed, once as the No. 3 seed, twice as the No. 4 seed and once—this year—as the No. 5 seed.

He didn’t just improve to 14-0 in Roland Garros finals, he’s now 21-0 in best-of-five-set finals on clay. The other seven finals came early on in his career when some other ATP events had best-of-five finals (four in 2005 at Monte Carlo, Barcelona, Rome and Stuttgart and three in 2006 at Monte Carlo, Barcelona and Rome).

He improved to 112-3 in his career at Roland Garros. And he’s now 137-3 in his career in best-of-five matches on clay, too, which includes the aforementioned 7-0 in best-of-five-set finals on clay and 18-0 in Davis Cup throughout his career.

He passed Federer on the all-time career prize money list. With $130.7 million he now has the second-most career prize money in tennis history, trailing only Djokovic.

He won his 92nd career ATP title. He’s still fourth in the Open Era, but catching up on third—he currently trails only Jimmy Connors (109), Federer (103) and Ivan Lendl (94).

It was his record-extending 63rd career ATP title on clay. Nadal has held this record for more than five years—he won the 50th ATP clay-court title of his career at Monte Carlo in April 2017, surpassing Guillermo Vilas’ previous record of 49.

His 6-3, 6-3, 6-0 win over Casper Ruud in the final is tied for his second-most dominant performance in a major final. He only lost four games against Federer in the 2008 Roland Garros final (6-1, 6-3, 6-0) and he also dropped just six games to Stan Wawrinka in the 2017 Roland Garros final (6-2, 6-3, 6-1).

He’s still the only man or woman in tennis history to win the same major 12 or more times—and he’s up to 14 at Roland Garros now. The next-most for any player in the history of the sport, male or female, is 11 (Margaret Court at the Australian Open).

This is the first time he’s won back-to-back majors since 2010. This is the third time he’s won multiple majors in a row—he won two in a row in 2008 (Roland Garros and Wimbledon) and three in a row in 2010 (Roland Garros, Wimbledon and the US Open).

He’s now 32-2 against Top 10 players at Roland Garros. The only two losses both came to Djokovic when he was No. 1 at the time, in 2015 and 2021.

He’s now 7-1 against first-time Grand Slam finalists in Grand Slam finals. The only one to get him was Wawrinka, who beat him in the 2014 Australian Open final.

He became just the second man this century to sweep the first two Grand Slam titles of the year. The only other man to achieve that since 2000 has been Djokovic, who won the Australian Open and Roland Garros in 2016 and 2021.

He became the third man in tennis history to reach 30 major finals. The first two are the usual suspects—Federer and Djokovic have both reached 31, with 20-11 records.

He became the third man since ATP rankings began in 1973 to defeat four Top 10 players at the same Grand Slam event. With wins over No. 9 Felix Auger-Aliassime, No. 1 Djokovic, No. 3 Alexander Zverev and No. 8 Ruud in the last four rounds, he’s the third man to achieve that feat, after Mats Wilander (who did it at Roland Garros in 1982) and Federer (who did it at the Australian Open in 2017).

He not only rose from No. 5 to No. 4 on the ATP rankings, but his lead at No. 1 on the ATP Race to Turin grew by more than 13 times. Going into Roland Garros, Nadal had a 130-point lead at the top of the year-to-date race (3,620 points to Stefanos Tsitsipas’ 3,490). Now, he has an 1,800-point lead (5,620 to Carlos Alcaraz’s 3,820).