The Claymore Mine!

Rafael Nadal’s 10 French Open crowns, the La Décima, as Nadal calls it in Spanish, is three more than runner-up Chris Evert and four more than Bjorn Borg at Roland Garros. It also BREAKS THE OPEN ERA RECORD at any major he had shared with Navratilova who won nine Wimbledons.

- Paul Fein

What are the greatest individable achievements in sports? Basketball great Oscar Robertson’s averaging a “triple double” (30.8 points, 12.5 rebounds and 11.4 assists) for the Cincinnati Royals in 1961-62 rates up there. So do the unbreakable records of 1963 career assists and 1.92 points per game by ice hockey legend Wayne Gretzky. And you’ll get no argument about cricket superstar Sachin Tendulkar’s 200 Tests with 15,921 runs at an average of 53.78 with 51 centuries and top score of 248 not out. Rod Laver’s twice capturing the Grand Slam — in 1962 and 1969 — stands out as another supreme feat.

Other indisputable tennis picks include Serena Williams’s 23 major singles titles, Roger Federer’s 18, and Navratilova’s Open Era record 59 major titles in singles, doubles, and mixed doubles. Now you can add Rafael Nadal’s 10 French Open crowns to this achievement pantheon.

TO PUT IT IN PERSPECTIVE, “La Décima,” as Nadal calls it in Spanish, is three more than runner-up Chris Evert and four more than Bjorn Borg at Roland Garros. It also breaks the Open Era record at any major he had shared with Navratilova who won nine Wimbledons. Impressively, the 10 titles have come in a brutally tough era with Roger Federer and Novak Djokovic as his superstar foes. On three of those conquests in Paris, including this year, Nadal did not surrender a set to his outclassed and overwhelmed opponents.

Indeed, a cliche repeated often, especially at this time of year,is: “The toughest challenge in tennis is beating Rafael Nadal at the French Open.” Stan Wawrinka even said it before the French Open final. So soberly — even sombrely — that you had to wonder if he felt he had been sentenced to the tennis equivalent of the guillotine.