Rafael Nadal’s victory at the Masters 1000 in Rome sets the tone for what may happen at Roland Garros. The Spanish tennis player had doubts, derived from his premature defeats in the Monte Carlo and Madrid tournaments, but the victory against Djokovic in the Foro Italico returned him to the maximum favoritism facing the main event of the year, in the calendar of the manacorense. Rafa arrives with his homework done and a Masters 1000 on clay under his arm, something he did every time he won Roland Garros except in 2020, a year marked by the pandemic. Nadal’s supremacy on clay is explained from the sphere of his triumphs in the Masters 1000, before Masters Series, before Roland Garros. Rafa has been crowned up to eleven times in Monte Carlo, five in Madrid and ten, with that of this Sunday in Rome, and always, with the exception of 2015, he won one of them before arriving at Roland Garros. The other mole of this outstanding statistic is in 2020, where only the Rome tournament was held, since Madrid and Monte Carlo were suspended due to the coronavirus. Rafa’s baggage in 2021 is irregular, but of the four tournaments he has played on land beaten has ended up crowning two of them. In addition to Rome, Nadal held a top-level final against Stefanos Tsitsipas at the Conde de Godó Trophy, where he had started with doubts that had accompanied him since the Monte Carlo Masters 1000.Nadal lost in the quarterfinals of the Principality tournament against Andrey Rublev, in a tournament that under normal conditions, probably, would not have escaped him.However, inactivity and his consequent lack of competitive rhythm led Rafael to give up early in a tournament of which he is clearly dominating, within a climate that moved to Barcelona, where he had to rush to the third set in his first two Matches against Ivashka and Nishikori Rome, Nadal’s salvation The final rounds of Godó restored optimism to Nadal’s staunch, but in Madrid Zverev crossed the path of the king of the earth to make him give up, as in Monte Carlo , in the quarterfinals. The two most important tournaments of the tour had been less than expected, and only a title in Rome would cause expectations to return to their place, said and done. Despite the exaggerated suffering in a round of 16 match against Shapovalov, which is already one of the great comebacks of his career, Rafa recovered to clearly beat Zverev, in the revenge of the Mutua Madrid Open, and the giant Opelka, before making his way to the final, where Djokovic did his best but couldn’t stop Nadal, as almost always, from finishing off a Masters 1000 title before the start of Roland Garros.
