Falling to his back at the end of it all, Rafael Nadal confirmed yet again his status as the King of Clay claiming a record 8th championship at Roland Garros – the first man in history to do so at the slams. The 3rd seed was the prohibitive favourite coming in to the final and defeated compatriot David Ferrer in straight sets 6-3, 6-2, 6-3. It was scoreline that in some ways belied the fight that Ferrer put up but Nadal was too often the stronger player and the gutsy Ferrer often faltered at the big moments in his first appearance at a slam final. This was Nadal’s 4th straight championships here in Paris, his second such streak having triumphed here between 2005 and 2008 before being famously upset in 2009 by Robin Soderling. That remains his only loss on the red clay here as he became the “winningest” player with 59 wins moving ahead of the great Roger Federer.
Nadal was understandably pleased with his triumph and thanked his family, team and his fans for their support. He recalled the difficult layoff period but was thrilled to return to Roland Garros and achieve this 8th championship which was unimaginable to him. He gave credit to Ferrer too, for making his first slam final. Ferrer repaid the compliment calling Nadal the 'best'. He was happy to have made his first final and stated that he would all he could to come back next year.
Defending champion Rafael Nadal made a return to the Roland Garros final for the 8th time in 9 appearances after outlasting world no.1 Novak Djokovic in a nail biting and topsy turvy 5 set semi-final that lasted an epic 4 hours and 37 minutes, fighting back from a break down in the final set to win 6-4, 3-6, 6-1, 6-7 (3), 9-7.
The second of two women's semi-finals saw the top seed, Serena Williams, in action on centre court. Williams would face last year’s runner up Sara Errani, for a place in Saturday's French Open final. Serena had a 5-0 head to head against Errani but since the Italian is a clay court specialist there was a chance that she could challenge the top seed, who was on a 29 match winning streak.
In the first of the two women's semi-finals, defending champion Maria Sharapova took on first time French Open semi-finalist Victoria Azarenka. The Azarenka-Sharapova rivalry is one of the more competitive and hard fought ones in women’s tennis over the past couple of years. 2012 was the breakout year in this rivalry and the two ladies have met 6 times since. Azarenka got the better of her Russian opponent 4 of those times to improve the career head to head to 7-5 in her favour.
