How Rafael Nadal broke tennis math: Titles, stats, and more

Numbers are how I make sense of the world. Through them, you can come to understand how a game is played and what matters the most within it. Each sport has its statistical guidelines, its must-win categories and its unbreakable records. And throughout what will end up going down as about a 23-year career, as, pushing so hard to reach the top of the sport, ended up breaking himself -- Nadal made absolute nonsense out of the numbers that define tennis.

In 641 charted matches, Roger Federer hit forehands for 48.8% of his groundstrokes. In 533 matches, Novak Djokovic was at 48.9%. In 302 matches, Andy Murray was at 49.1%. Three of the best players the sport has ever produced were just looking for a 50-50 split here. You can almost blame Nadal for the demise of the one-handed backhand, too. With the torque and height that his forehand generated, even Federer, with just about the most aesthetically-pleasing one-hander of all time, could neither generate proper power with a topspin backhand nor kill the pace and reset the point with a slice backhand.

As he heads into his final French Open, Nadal is 539-66 all time on clay. That's a win percentage of 0.891, which is pretty ridiculous in itself. But it includes going 72-25 from 2001-03 and going 5-3 this year. In between the start and finish of his career, he went 462-38, a win percentage of. He was unbeaten on clay in 2006 and 2010, lost just once five times and lost just twice five times .

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