Rafael Nadal doesn’t tend to complain, unless the subject is on the length of the tennis season (a worthy cause). But in an interview this week with Britain’s Daily Mail ahead of next week’s year-end ATP World Tour Finals, Nadal came off as fairly whiny in expressing his dissatisfaction that the Finals have been played on indoor hard courts since he started qualifying for them in 2006. He, obviously, would prefer clay.

The world No. 5 told Stuart Fraser:

“I believe that it’s not fair that a player like me really never played on a surface that was a little bit more favourable. I always played on the worst surface possible for me.

“If it’s indoor at the 02, then great, but you can build a different type of surface there. It is a fantastic place to organise a World Tour Finals. The atmosphere is just amazing and I am very happy it is there. I enjoy it every time I have had the chance to be there, but we can play on clay there too.”

(AP)

Cue exaggerated eye-roll.

Rafael Nadal is a sublime tennis player on any surface — one of the best in the history of the sport. But on clay he’s otherworldly, better than Jordan in his prime, perhaps equal to Tiger in his, though doing so in an eight-year stretch that will never be touched. (Nadal has separate winning streaks of 31 and 39 at the French Open and has taken home nine titles. He once won 81 straight matches on the surface. I could go on and on.)

But through all that, Nadal’s has been aided by the ATP giving clay-court tennis an elevated level of importance as compared to hard, grass and indoor courts. Don’t get me wrong, the guy has won five Slams off of his favorite surface, so it’s not like he’s a slouch off clay. But if anyone shouldn’t be complaining about how many important tournaments are on clay, it’s Nadal.

(Getty Images)

When in 1990 the ATP introduced a set of “Masters” events that were one step below a Grand Slam, three of those nine events were designated to be played on clay. Now called the Masters 1000 (referring to the amount of rankings points up for grabs), the competitions in Monte Carlo, Madrid and Rome generate a full one-third of the tournaments and, again, are all on clay. Nadal has won the most of these Masters events in history (27) — Djokovic is hot on his heels with 26 — and that’s thanks to 19 titles in those clay events.

A tennis season essentially last 11 months. It has a dedicated two-month clay season, which is 18% of the year. Yet 29% of big tournaments (four Slams, nine 1000 events, WTF) are on clay. As has been mentioned hundreds of times before, the argument is not that clay is given short shrift, it’s that the ATP overemphasizes clay. There’s no Masters 1000 event on grass courts, for instance, something that would greatly benefitted Roger Federer in his prime and Novak Djokovic (as well as Federer) now. Yet there’s three on clay.

Monte Carlo. (AP)

Fair? Who’s to say. Europe is the tennis hotbed so it makes sense to put big tournaments there, where clay is often a favored surface. But the idea that Nadal, who has never won the World Tour Finals and has only made the finals twice, is somehow getting the short end because the year’s final event is played on an indoor hard court (and one that’s not particularly fast, something that would also help Federer and Djokovic, in that order) is preposterous.