Third Serve
Talk Tennis Guru
Honestly, I think Nadal's level on clay was pretty much the same for most of 2005-2014. I can't find very many noticeable differences in raw level, though as you said he faced tougher competition against Djokovic than Federer. Tougher competition, however, is not always conducive to good level. He had the godly movement from 2005-2008 and the more impressive shotmaking from 2010-2014. The two sort of cancel each other out, imo. Not much of a difference at all, except for perhaps his 2009, 2011, and 2014 versions being a bit worse than the rest of the lot.Possible. We will never had a proof of which is true, but it's one of them:
1) Peak Nole clearly > Peak Federer on clay, so Nadal was as dominant in 2005-07 as in 2012-14 is caused by the opponent, but he was better in 2012-14. So the opponent not clearly dominated in 2012-14 could beat 2005-07 Rafa.
2) Nadal was on a steady level, and Peak Nole almost = Peak Federer on clay. In this case Nole had probably lost to 2005-07 Rafa.
I'm for the first one. Because I think it's reasonable a player improve from 19-21 to 26-28 and Nadal improved on non-clay surfaces too in these years.
IMO he hadn't an early peak only on clay. He is only so good on clay that he can win earlier when he was not yet peak, but his trajectory was linear among surfaces(Maybe grass before HC).
Debatable, obviously.
An example is that, on the other hand, Federer-Djokovic 2011 is a clue for option 2. But a match is not a great sample, and I feel more reasonable to assume a "standard" career trajectory(26-28 > 19-21) for a player and consider that an outlier.
I'd also contest the bolded. Nadal had a bit of an early grass peak as well. He made the final in 2006 and played about as well as he did in 2011 (definitely better in the middle two sets) and his 2007 and 2008 Wimbledon runs need no introduction. I'd say Nadal peaked earlier on grass, later on hard, and had both early and late peaks for clay. It's just that he's that good on the surface.
While I think Nadal would definitely struggle more against Djokovic, suggesting that any version of Djokovic would be the favorite over any version of Nadal at RG from 2005-2008 is a bit of an outlandish claim, at least for me. People were already suggesting that Nadal was going to be the best on clay by 2007, even despite his lack of titles compared to Borg at the time. It was certainly because of his level.
For me, Nadal's RG ranking from those years probably goes like this:
2008
2007
2012 (can be swapped with 2007)
2010
2005
2013
2006
gap
2014
2011
gap
2009