The 10 Matches That Made Rafael Nadal the King of Clay: Our countdown begins

Tennis fans can, and often do, argue over who the men’s GOAT is.

But there’s no disagreement when it comes to the identity of the King of Clay. Rafael Nadal was given that sobriquet in the earliest days of his career, when he was barely out of his teens. What might have seemed premature at the time turned out to be prescient. Twenty years after his first ATP victory on the surface, he has the most clay-court majors (14) and titles (63), and the longest winning streak (81) and highest winning percentage (91.3) on the surface, in men’s-tennis history.

So as the 36-year-old 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 ruler of the red.

MATCH 1: 2003 Monte Carlo, second round: Nadal d. Albert Costa, 7-5, 6-3

I played, indeed, a very good match.

“As he walks down the tunnel onto this center court for the first time, he’ll get a terrific ovation.” That’s how veteran TV commentator John Barrett welcomed 16-year-old rookie Rafael Nadal to the main stadium in Monte Carlo, in the spring of 2003.

As Barrett predicted, there was a buzz in the audience for the young Mallorcan qualifier, who had won his first-round match over Karol Kucera and was now facing 2002 Roland Garros champion Albert Costa. As Nadal strode to his chair, one of his trademark mannerisms was already in evidence: He was holding a Babolat racquet in his left hand, seemingly signaling his readiness for the fight ahead. As for his soon-to-be-famous water bottles, only one large one makes an appearance before this match. Did the second one, and its meticulous positioning, arrive later?

No matter. The elements that would make Rafa’s game great were very much in place. You can hear it in the reactions from the broadcasters in the booth that day, Barrett and Jason Goodall, as Nadal slashed his way across the red clay.

“A quite exceptional topspin forehand.” “A quite remarkable defense.” “What a smash, world class.” “He refuses to go away.”

For two Brits, that qualifies as gushing.

“A little clenched fist there,” Barrett notes early on, in another bit of understated foreshadowing. Little did he know how many more of those clenched fists we would see, and how many versions Nadal would invent. Rafa also grunted, loudly, with virtually every swing, something that wasn’t common in the men’s game at the time. Together, the fists and the grunts were just small indications of the new, headlong energy that Rafa would inject into the sport.

The 27-year-old Costa, a Top 10 player at the time, didn’t know what was about to hit him. The day before, he told reporters, “I’m feeling very, very good, strong…very confident.”

For every confident swing he took, though, Nadal had an answer, either with his shot-making or his retrieving. In the second set, Costa hit what looked to be a crosscourt backhand winner at a sharp angle. But young Rafa ranged all the way to the edge of the court to turn it into an even more sharply angled crosscourt forehand winner of his own.

“I was a teenager in a hurry, madly hyperactive, operating at a thousand revolutions in training and in competition,” Nadal would say about the spring of 2003, a period when he shot up nearly 100 spots in the rankings. A few weeks after Monte Carlo, he would achieve an even bigger personal milestone by defeating his friend Carlos Moya in Hamburg.

Nadal was moving so fast that it could be tough for a tennis journalist to keep up. After the match, he was asked what he thought it would feel like to be in the Top 100.

“I’m already in the Top 100,” Rafa answered. He knew that his ranking points from the Costa win would put him into that elite company for the first time.

“I played, indeed, a very good match,” he said. Still, even at 16, Rafa was already a realist and a pragmatist.

Asked what pleased him most about his performance, he said, “What pleases me the most is having won the match.”

Asked how far he could go in the draw, he said, “I don’t think I’m going very far in this tournament. I’ll keep on fighting until the end. I’ll try to play well. But it doesn’t only depend on me, if I win or lose, it also depends on the others.”

Nadal liked clay, but he wasn’t claiming to be the king of it just yet. He was right. In his next match, he lost in straight sets to Guillermo Coria, who would go on to reach the final.

Rafa may have been moving a little too fast, or swinging a little too hard, for his own good that spring. A shoulder injury sidelined him for two weeks, just long enough to keep him out of Roland Garros. But he returned for Wimbledon, where he reached the third round on a foreign surface. The ATP named him Newcomer of the Year.

Yet nothing he did that season signaled what was ahead quite like his win over the Roland Garros champion, in Monte Carlo.

Tomorrow: Rafa heeds Moya's words