For a large portion of the 2010s, Rafael Nadal really struggled at Wimbledon, crashing out in the early stages of the championships on several occasions.
In his first seven campaigns at the All England Club, Nadal made five finals and won the title in 2008 and again in 2010.
From 2012 until 2017, however, the Spaniard failed to make it out of the fourth round in South West London.
He lost to world number 100, Lukas Rosol, at the 2012 event, and in 2013 he fell in the first round to Steve Darcis, ranked 135th.
After bowing out to a young Nick Kyrgios at Wimbledon in 2014, Nadal’s second-round opponent in 2015 was Dustin Brown, who had already beaten the king of clay before.
Photo credit should read GLYN KIRK/AFP via Getty ImagesDustin Brown’s victory over Rafael Nadal at Wimbledon in 2015
At the Halle Open in 2014, Brown defeated the 22-time major champion in straight sets 6-4, 6-1.
A year later, the two met for the second time, and the Jamaican went into the bout feeling confident.
He recalled on the ‘Changeover Podcast’: “I was thinking that I can win if I do the same thing, obviously, I have to believe that I can win the match, and I need to do the same thing [as in Halle].
“The question is, am I going to be able to do that because at the end of the day it’s really high-risk tennis, and I’ve got to do that to take him out of his comfort zone and not make any mistakes doing it.
“Or doing more winners and not as many unforced errors, which is very difficult.
“I remember that I was in a locker room before and they asked me: ‘Hey, do you want to go and see the court?’ I was like: ‘No. I’m not trying to deal with these nerves now. I’ll just go deal with it when I get out there. So I’ll just kick back in the locker room.’
“Because before that point, I’d never been on Centre Court. I’ve never watched a match on Centre Court.
“So, I was like, ‘I’ll deal with that once I go out,’ and I guess what helped is that I played against Rafa before in 2014 so I didn’t have to deal as much with who I’m playing against.
“But more like going out and like taking it all in and obviously being on Arthur Ashe before and other big courts, it helped, but it’s still a lot when it’s Wimbledon and it’s packed.”
Rafael Nadal’s explanation for his poor run at Wimbledon between 2012 and 2017
Featuring on the ‘Served‘ podcast with Andy Roddick in March, Nadal explained his disappointing results at Wimbledon in the mid-2010s.
He said: “There arrived a point that I was not able to play anymore on grass for a lot of years”
“It’s not like I forgot to play on grass, it’s simply that my knees were not holding; I was not able to slow down.”
“During this period of time, that were very important years of my tennis career, my knees didn’t allow me to play on grass.”
“For me, it was painful because I felt that my chances were bigger, if I was healthy enough, on grass than hard.
Nadal finally found his feet on the grass courts of Wimbledon once again in 2018, when he reached the semi-finals.