Most Tennis career Grand Slams

Novak and Rafa left it all out on the court in the Monte Carlo Rolex Masters semi-final today in a match many have referred to as one of the biggest, significant and most anticipated match of the tennis season thus far in 2015. Remarkably Nadal went into this match as the underdog, on red clay, in Monte Carlo, something that hasn’t happened in nearly a decade of tennis. The last clay match that happened I believe was against Roger Federer back in 2006, so it was a staggering start to the build up of this match, a fact that some were surprised by because of Rafael Nadal’s rich history in Monte Carlo and his stranglehold of the red dirt for his entire career, but also a fair few felt Novak had done enough for the last six months in particular.

Running off wins in Bercy at Masters 1000 level, World Tour Finals, another grand slam in Melbourne and two more Masters in the early US hard-court swing, was enough for many to signal that he’s the man to beat on any surface right now, even clay. Like I said, many stick to tradition and expect Rafael on clay to be the favourite, which I’ll come to at the end of this article and hopefully get to a conclusion of who I think is the favourite going into Roland Garros and whether I personally stand by the rich history Rafael’s made of himself or whether I think every dog has it’s day and everybody run their course eventually. Both are good logical ways of looking at the product life-cycle of a tennis player in many respects, so both have their valid arguments.