RG17 Highs and lows: #1, Nadal destroys the opposition

Some stars passed on playing in the French Open, while others weren't allowed in. You know all their names. What matters is what took place inside and outside the lines in Paris. On the heels of a fairly predictable and alternately off-the-chain major event, here are the thoroughly vetted, unequivocal–or entirely subjective–best and worst moments from the 2017 French Open.

See No. 2 here.

1

Recycle. Refuel. Rafa.

If you're reading this, you must truly love the man. Everything that needs to be said, at least in the near term, about Rafael Nadal's historic 10th Roland Garros title has been written already. From Steve Tignor's take for TENNIS.com to Gerald Marzorati's for *The New Yorker*, among an armada of think-pieces, it's all been said.

La Decima.

The Decimation.

On one Sunday in June, Stan Wawrinka likely knew Nadal couldn't be stopped. The Roland Garros audience knew it. TV commentators and other journalistic observers knew it. Fans far and wide knew it. Uncle Toni sure knew it. And most of all, Nadal knew it.

You can't stop what's coming. Not when it's next-level, video-gaming stuff such as this:

There's no fitting response to that other than a racquet-clap, and Wawrinka, completely defanged and declawed, complied.

Consider this: Over three sets of the men's singles final, the ball was in play for just 21 minutes and 59 seconds. That's just staggering. Likewise staggering: Nadal dropped only 35 games in his stunning performance at Roland Garros. It's the fewest since Bjorn Borg dropped just 32 in 1978.

With that final Swiss scalp in his hand, Nadal, surely the Pride of Spain, won one for the Big Four, that can't-tout-them-enough quartet of Roger Federer, Novak Djokovic, Andy Murray and himself.

He also catalyzed a series of droll tweets among the likes of Andy Roddick, Mardy Fish and John Isner.

For those of us who will never be the focus of a grand Twitter Moment, who will never have a Longreads dossier compiled about us or a Nike street shoe named for our accomplishments, we may harbor the memory of witnessing peak Nadal—so much brutality off the racquet of one so kind outside the lines.

The annual Roland Garros birthday boy is now 31 flavors and then some.

Follow Jon on Twitter @jonscott9.