With the 2012 Roland Garros all set to start today, few people would bet against the “King of Clay” Rafael Nadal raising his overall haul of six French Open titles. Nadal who has been a former World number 1 is tied with Bjorn Borg for highest number of Roland Garros title and in all likelihood would leave Paris on a winning note.

Nadal has a 46-1 winning record at the French Open and his lone defeat came at the year 2009 where he lost to Robin Soderling due to a knee injury.  Barring that it had been a quite blemish free tournament and his dominance at clay does not require any sort of introduction.

Only the World number1 Novak Djokovic and great Roger Federer are his real competition in the tournament. But then going by their past records against Nadal on clay it does establish a fact that he definitely holds an edge over his two nemeses. He holds two 12-2 and 11-2 records against Federer and Nadal respectively which sure does start make him the favorite.

Also the fact that Djokovic has won three grand slams last year and five in all and his three wins at a grand stage shows how dominant he was but despite that fact he still could not win the French Open. He would be eyeing his fourth straight grand slam at the Roland Garros but then he would have to go past the might of Nadal to achieve which looks quite an indomitable task to achieve. And also Djokovic has never made it to the finals of the French Open and even if he does this year, it would not be that easy for him to go past Nadal. And talking about Federer ranked third has won 16 grand slam titles but has won the French Open only once and that too when Nadal pulled out in 2009 due to an injury. He has met Nadal four times in the finals of the French and lost all of them. This does show that even a player of his caliber cannot shake Nadal on clay.

And also Nadal would be coming into the tournament after a win at the Italian Open and this winning momentum should take him to one more glory at the Roland Garros.