However, fans via social media, writers, and commentators continue to mention Nadal’s 3 losses and 1 minor title on clay this year. How does this compare to other years? Typically, Nadal averages 1–2 losses on clay by the end of the year and has around 4 clay court titles. The clay court season is no where near done. Now, the ebb and flow of his dominance is clear if you compare his injury timing to his peak titles. However, this time Nadal has not bounced back as quickly (i.e. 2013 aka the year of brilliance). His losses, while still few, came much earlier in tournaments than anticipated. But should we actually panic?

If you consider the frequency of the losses, then it does raise an eyebrow because Nadal’s dominance on clay is slowly disappearing, as illustrated by the decrease in consecutive wins between losses. However, after a serious monopoly on clay court titles, this really does not surprise me. So the real question to consider: has anything in Nadal’s game changed significantly?

It is hard for me to remember a time when anyone could break Nadal’s service game so easily. Even more surprising is the decline in his ability to break his opponent’s serve. It is not like he does not get the opportunity: he’s currently averaging 9 break point chances per match. But if you graph the average fraction of break points saved and converted and compare it to his own averages, it is clear this is the first year he is below both of his own averages (70% break points saved and 53% break points converted). Also, if you just look at these statistics from 2010 until present day, there is a clear declining trend. Now, there are a couple of ways to interpret this trend but if I rely on pure definition, the two most important things for saving and converting break points should be serve and return, respectively.