Did any one notice this stat? This is the 19th GS final appearance for Nadal
and it is his 37th GS appearance.
This means Rafa has more than 50% chance of reaching final in any GS
that he enters. That is an amazing percentage. While I have not checked the
similar stat for other folks, I have a strong feeling that Rafa will be ahead
of everybody else (both active and retired players, both Open era and
Pre open era) players on this.
Of the 18 finals played so far, he has won 13 (little more than 2/3rd).
Now, what does it all mean. If Rafa continues at this rate for 5 more
years (He is now 27 and it is reasonable to expect that he will have his
mojo for some time), he will be playing in 20 majors. Based on the above
rate, this would mean he would be in finals of 10 of them. Again, based
on his current performance, a conservative estimate would be that he
will win 6 more slams.
That puts him at 13 + 6 = 19 > 17.
I don't think anybody else gave an estimate of his slam count from
this simple, fairly straightforward and scientific perspective.
Of course, one small caveat is that with increasing age, the
success rate may not remain the same as the current rate.