Rafael Nadal won his thirteenth French Open Men's Singles title. He achieved this in 2020, beating Novak Djokovic in the final.
The basics of that win:
Final score: 6-0, 6-2, 7-5
Opponent: Novak Djokovic
This wasn't a normal French Open — it was delayed to September/October 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic. The tournament usually happens in late May/early June.
Nadal didn't drop a single set through the entire tournament.
Why this title matters more than a normal number:
Before this win, Nadal already held the record for most French Open titles by anyone, male or female, in the Open Era.
Winning it a 13th time extended a record that no one else has come close to touching. For context, the next closest players in French Open history (like Björn Borg and Chris Evert) won it 6 times each on the men's and women's side respectively.
This win also brought Nadal level with Roger Federer's all-time men's Grand Slam total (20 majors) at that point in history.
Nadal's full French Open title timeline:
Year | Opponent Beaten in Final |
|---|---|
2005 | Mariano Puerta |
2006 | Roger Federer |
2007 | Roger Federer |
2008 | Roger Federer |
2010 | Robin Söderling |
2011 | Roger Federer |
2012 | Novak Djokovic |
2013 | David Ferrer |
2014 | Novak Djokovic |
2017 | Stan Wawrinka |
2018 | Dominic Thiem |
2019 | Dominic Thiem |
2020 | Novak Djokovic |
One thing worth flagging: Nadal didn't stop at 13. He went on to win it two more times — in 2021 he lost in the semifinal to Djokovic (so no title that year), but he came back and won again in 2022, taking his French Open count to 14 titles total, which remains the record today. So if your question was really asking "how many French Opens has Nadal won," the current answer is 14, not 13. If you specifically wanted the year he hit exactly 13, that's 2020 — the answer above stands.
Quick sanity check on the question itself: worth double-checking whether you meant "13th" literally, or whether you were thinking of his overall record. These get conflated a lot in casual conversation, and the distinction matters if you're using this fact somewhere it needs to be precise (a quiz, an article, a bet).