By Chris Oddo | @TheFanChild | Thursday May 27, 2021
The Road to Roland Garros has led us here, to Paris, where history beckons. The table is set for another historic version of the world’s finest clay-court event—let’s take a look inside the numbers to see what’s at stake.
100 When we left off last year Rafael Nadal had just hit the century mark at Roland Garros. The King of Clay enters this year’s event with 100 wins and just two losses. As always he is the man to beat.
3 Number of Big 3 members in the top half of the men’s singles draw at Roland-Garros. That means either Dominic Thiem will reach the final on the lower half, or a first-time Roland-Garros men’s singles finalists will emerge.
59 There are 59 Grand Slam titles in the top half of the men’s singles draw (Federer/ Nadal: 20, Djokovic, 18, Cilic 1) and ONE IN THE LOWER HALF (Dominic Thiem).
5 Nadal is bidding to win his fifth consecutive Roland-Garros title for the SECOND time.
2 Novak Djokovic is bidding to win the career slam for a second time. If he does it, he’d be the first Open Era man to do the trick and and the third man in history to achieve the feat.
0-4 No.2-seeded Daniil Medvedev has never won a match at Roland-Garros. He’ll try a fifth time, facing Alexander Bublik in the first round.
1983 The last time a Frenchman won the Roland-Garros singles title. Long live Yannik Noah!
12 Number of men making their Roland-Garros debut in 2021. They are:
Lorenzo Musetti
Jenson Brooksby
Aslan Karatsev
Carloa Alcaraz
Bernabe Zapatta Miralles
Roman Safiullin
Alessandro Gianessi
Mario Vilella Martinez
Arthur Cazaux Win R1
Botic Van de Zandschulp
Enzo Couacaud
Christopher O’Connell
125-2 Nadal’s record in best-of-five matches on clay.
4 Number of ATP players making their Grand Slam main draw debut in Paris. They are:
Musetti
Zapata Miralles
Cazaux
Couacaud
2 Number of players that have won multiple clay-court titles in 2021 – Nadal and Tsitsipas have two each.
10 the Roland Garros men's singles title has been successfully defended 19 times in the Open Era. Nadal has 10 of them.