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By Chris Oddo | Thursday May 10, 2018

 
Rafael Nadal

Rafael Nadal turned back Diego Schwartman in Madrid, stretching his streak of consecutive sets won on clay to 50 with a 6-3, 6-4 victory.

Photo Source: Getty

What can you say that hasn’t been said about Rafael Nadal on clay? Tennis journalists are currently wringing their hands, trying to come up with new ways to explain the King of Clay's dominance on the terre battue as the Spaniard keeps locking down new milestones and appears even more invincible than ever at the age of 31.

It’s a task that tends to get more difficult with each smashed record.

Today Nadal was a smashing success yet again, and he defeated Argentina’s Diego Schwartzman, 6-3, 6-4, to pass John McEnroe as the ATP’s all-time leader in consecutive sets won on a single surface.

Nadal won his 49th and 50th consecutive sets on Thursday, breaking McEnroe’s 34-year-old record, which was set on the indoor carpet in Johnny Mac’s heyday, back in 1984 when the American went 82-3 as the ATP’s top player.


In 2018 Nadal is the ATP’s top player and while he needs to retain his title this week at Madrid to remain atop the ATP’s ranking table, he is showing no signs of slowing down as he moves into the quarterfinals and prepares to face Dominic Thiem in what will be a heavily anticipated battle.

All of Nadal’s battles are heavily anticipated these days, because whether they make for compelling two-way tennis or not, there is still the magic of getting to see the Spaniard ply his trade on his beloved clay. But in Thiem there is the promise of a challenging match. The Austrian showed some snarl on Thursday in coming back from a set down to defeat Borna Coric, 2-6, 7-6(5), 6-4, and the fact does remain that Thiem is the last man to defeat Nadal on clay, a feat he has accomplished twice in his young career.

Nadal was pushed by Schwartzman on Thursday, but the Argentine could not deliver his best when it mattered most. The 25-year-old World No.16 lost the opener on the strength of a single break and he appeared to be headed for the same fate in the second set when he pulled some remarkable shotmaking out of his hat and broke Nadal to pull even at 4-4.

But the momentum shift would prove to be short-lived as Schwartzman failed to convert two game points in the next game and after engaging in a long struggle he wilted and served back-to-back double-faults to hand Nadal the re-break.

Nadal would hold serve in the next game to finish off his victory in one hour and 44 minutes.


If taking down Nadal is already a monumental task, it gets even harder when ill-timed mistakes creep in. For the most part Schwartzman played a stellar match—he matched Nadal in many rallies and struck some magical winners, but Nadal’s resilience and his ability to win second-serve points kept him in the driver’s seat pretty much the whole way.

At the moment Nadal isn’t just a powerful figure from behind the baseline. He’s doing all the little things right. Making his forays to the net count, serving with precision, never missing overheads and proceeding with exceptional clarity from a shot selection perspective.

Not only has he not dropped a set on clay since he fell to Thiem in the Rome quarterfinals last May, he hasn’t even been taken to a tiebreaker and he has only dropped more than four games once.

On Friday he’ll look to continue his winning ways, but the streak of sets won is the furthest thing from his mind. Earlier in the week Nadal told reporters that he is in Madrid for one thing and one thing only: to win the tournament. It’s this big picture thinking that has always made it easy for Nadal to put the blinders on and play his most punishing tennis when it matters the most.

Nadal improves to 18-1 on the season and 14-0 on the clay. Two of those wins have come against Schwartzman, who pushed him to four sets in Australia in January.

Nadal has won two straight against Thiem since his loss to the Austrian at Rome in 2017. Recently, he dropped just two games from Thiem in the Monte-Carlo quarterfinals.

 

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