Recent Channel Slams in Men’s Tennis

Ethan Bondick is a high school student and athlete. In addition to following professional tennis and training to play at the collegiate level, Ethan Bondick started his own stringing company.

In professional tennis, the “channel slam” is an accomplishment players can achieve by winning both the French Open and Wimbledon (on the other side of the English Channel) in the same year. The feat is unique and challenging due not only to the unusual proximity of the events, compared to the gaps between other Grand Slams, but the drastically different styles of tennis needed to succeed on clay and grass. In short, a player must secure 14 consecutive victories in just seven weeks, an especially daunting task for male players, who contend best of five sets at majors.

Dating back to the start of the Open Era of tennis in 1968, when professionals and amateurs were permitted to compete at the same tournaments, only four men have completed the channel slam, the three most recent of which occurred between 2008 and 2010. Rafael Nadal secured the first channel slam in nearly three decades in dominant fashion, dropping only four games to rival Roger Federer in the French Open final before eliminating Federer 9-7 in the fifth set of Wimbledon less than two months later. The latter is routinely cited as one of the sport’s finest matches.

In 2009, Nadal lost for the first time ever at Roland Garros. Federer seized the opportunity in style, not only capturing his first grand slam victory on clay, but reclaiming the Wimbledon trophy he had ceded to Nadal, who earlier had to withdraw from the that event due to injury. Nadal recovered in typical fashion, winning the 2010 French Open without dropping a set. He then avoided several early round scares at Wimbledon before defeating Andy Murray and Tomas Berdych in straight sets to cap off the sport’s most recent channel slam. In doing so, he joined Bjorn Borg as the only man with multiple channel slams.