Reaching a Grand Slam final is a very special feat that turns into something exceptional if you do that without losing a set! The draws at Majors did not always contain six best-of-five matches en route to the title match and the first player who managed to win all 18 sets before the final was Jimmy Connors at Wimbledon in 1975.
Bjorn Borg, Ilie Nastase, Guillermo Vilas, Ivan Lendl, Jim Courier, Andre Agassi, Lleyton Hewitt, Roger Federer, Novak Djokovic and Rafael Nadal are among the players who achieved that, with the list becoming even more exclusive if we are eager to find players who did that three times.
Jimmy Connors, Ivan Lendl and Bjorn Borg have done that during the 70s and 80s and we had to wait for a couple of decades to add Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal, the most dominant Grand Slam players with 37 crowns they won together.
Connors and Lendl have stopped on three Grand Slam finals reached without losing a set, trailing one behind the great Swede Borg who did that four times, once and Wimbledon followed by three stellar Roland Garros runs before he decided to withdraw from the Tour.
It took almost 30 years to see another player with this achievement and it was Rafael Nadal who advanced into his fourth Grand Slam final with a perfect 18-0 score in sets, doing that at Roland Garros in 2007, 2008 and 2010 before catching the Swede in New York later that year when he won the first US Open crown in superb style.
Rafa did that twice in the next seven years to stand on six after the Roland Garros in 2017 and it was his great rival Roger Federer who managed to catch him on six finals without losing a set last year in Melbourne, at the age of 36! Rafa and Roger stayed neck and neck for a year and the Spaniard has grabbed the leading position once again after demolishing Stefanos Tsitsipas in the semi-final of the Australian Open, playing on a level that his rivals were unable to match and notching his record-breaking seventh Grand Slam final without losing a set.
James Duckworth, Matthew Ebden, Alex de Minaur, Tomas Berdych, Frances Tiafoe and Stefanos Tsitsipas could not take a set against the mighty Spaniard, with just two breaks of serve he suffered in all six matches. Tomas Berdych had a chance to break his run, creating a set point at 6-5 in the third set but Rafa stayed calm to repel it and continue his perfect march towards the second Grand Slam title in Melbourne.
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