Players Who Won A Grand Slam Without Dropping A Set In This Decade

Winning a Grand Slam title is hard enough. Winning a Slam without dropping a set is, even more, harder. It is a feat that has occurred only on a handful of occasions in the Open Era.

It has happened six times at the French Open, and twice each at the Australian Open and Wimbledon while remarkably no US Open champion has gone all the way without dropping a set since tennis opened its doors to professionals in the summer of 1968.

The Australian Open and the French Open have each been witness to 4 straight-set finals during the decade that was 2010 to 2019. The corresponding numbers at Wimbledon and the US Open during the same period are respectively two apiece.

Let us find out on which of these 11 occasions (sans 3 at the US Open) produced a Grand Slam champion who did not drop a set en route to the title.

Rafael Nadal: 2010 French Open

Rafael Nadal

In his 6th appearance at the French Open in 2010, Nadal lifted his 5th title of the tournament.

In the process, the Spaniard became the sixth player in the Open Era to win a Grand Slam 5 or more times. As if that was not remarkable enough, Nadal did not drop a set at the clay-court major for the second time in three years.

The first player to win all 3 clay court Masters 1000 tournaments in a season displayed little signs of exhaustion on the Terre battue of Paris. In his first 4 matches at the tournament, Nadal was stretched beyond 4 games only once.

Nadal then saw off compatriot Nicolas Almagro in straight sets, two of them being tiebreaks, before beating fellow southpaw Juergen Melzer also in straight sets to arrive in his 5th title match. In the final, Nadal beat returning finalist Robin Soderling for the loss of ten games to lift his 5th French Open title.

In the process, Nadal emulated Borg as the only players to win multiple times at Roland Garros without dropping a set during the entire tournament.

Rafael Nadal: 2017 French Open

Nadal lifts his 10th French Open title in 2017Roger Federer

Enduring the longest Grand Slam drought of his career (3 years) since making his major breakthrough at the 2005 French Open, Nadal came into the 2017 edition of the competition having endured a five-set defeat at the Australian Open to Roger Federer earlier in the season.

However, momentum was with the Spaniard as he made his 13th consecutive appearance at the tournament following a La Decima of titles at Monte Carlo and Barcelona.

Nadal dropped only 22 games in 5 matches as he returned to the Roland Garros semifinals for the first time since 2014. Conceding only 13 games in his victories over Dominic Thiem and Stanislas Wawrinka in the semifinals and finals respectively, Nadal registered the least number of games by a Grand Slam champion since Bjorn Borg dropped 32 games at the 1978 French Open.

In the process of registering his record-extending 10th triumph at the tournament, Nadal emulated Borg as the only players to win three titles at the tournament without dropping a set on each occasion.

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Roger Federer: 2017 Wimbledon

Continuing a remarkable season following the longest injury lay-off of his professional career, Roger Federer won his first Grand Slam in over 4.5 years by lifting his 5th title at the 2017 Australian Open.

Following a first Indian Wells-Miami double in 11 years and his 9th title in Halle, Federer arrived at Wimbledon in the pink of health and form. The Swiss was taken to a tiebreak on 5 occasions but refused to drop a set as he reeled off successive straight set wins over Alexandr Dolgopolov, Dusan Lajovic, Mischa Zverev, Grigor Dimitrov, Milos Raonic and Tomas Berdych to reach his 11th Wimbledon final.

An injured Cilic proved no match in the final as Federer conceded only 8 games to become the first player in the Open Era after Bjorn Borg to win Wimbledon without dropping a set. It marked the second time Federer lifted a Grand Slam title without conceding a set, following his run to the title at the 2007 Australian Open.

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