PARIS, June 12: His clay-court prowess as unassailable as ever, Rafael Nadal won his record 10th French Open title by dominating 2015 champion Stan Wawrinka 6-2, 6-3, 6-1 in the final Sunday.

No other man or woman has won 10 championships at the same major in the Open era, which began in 1968.

Call it a Perfect 10.

The 31-year-old Nadal was overwhelmingly good from start to finish against Wawrinka — and over the past two weeks en route to La Decima, Spanish for “10th.” Not only did Nadal win every set he played in the tournament, he dropped a total of only 35 games, the second fewest by any man on the way to any title at a Grand Slam tournament in the Open era with all matches being best-of-five-sets.

Along with improving to 10-0 in finals at Roland Garros, Nadal increased his career haul to 15 Grand Slam trophies, breaking a tie with Pete Sampras for second place in the history of men’s tennis, behind only rival Roger Federer’s 18.

It marked a stirring return to the top for Nadal at his preferred event and on his preferred surface: Over his career, he is 79-2 at the French Open and 102-2 in all best-of-five-set matches on clay.

“I play my best at all events, but the feeling here is impossible to describe. It’s impossible to compare it to another place,” Nadal said. “The nerves, the adrenaline, I feel on the court are impossible to compare to another feeling. This is the most important event in my career.”

A year ago in Paris, Nadal surprisingly withdrew before the third round because of a wrist injury, making the announcement at a news conference while wearing a blue brace on his left arm and a look of resignation of his face. He couldn’t bring himself to watch much of the rest of the 2016 French Open, he said, other than some doubles matches involving a good pal, and the singles final.

Finally back to full strength in the offseason, Nadal returned to work, reconstructing his forehand and redoubling his efforts to get back to his best.

Well, he sure proved to be precisely that Sunday, when the conditions were exactly to the liking of a guy who grew up on the island of Mallorca. The sun was shining, there was barely a trace of cloud in the bright blue sky and the temperature was about 85 degrees (30 Celsius).

Wawrinka is no slouch; he owns three major titles, including one from Roland Garros, and had never lost a Grand Slam final. But a five-set semifinal win Friday over No. 1-ranked Andy Murray must have taken something out of the 32-year-old from Switzerland, the oldest French Open finalist since 1973. His shots didn’t have their usual verve, his legs their usual spring.

After one point Sunday, Wawrinka bent over, leaning one arm on his racket and resting the other on a knee. When he netted a forehand to close a 14-stroke back-and-forth in the second set, he pounded his strings on his head several times. Later, he spiked his racket, then mangled it by breaking it over his knee, drawing a warning from the chair umpire.

Nadal has that way of wearing down opponents, physically and mentally. On this day, he was terrific. He won all 12 service games, made a mere 12 unforced errors, and won 94 total points to Wawrinka’s 57.

When it ended, Nadal dropped to his back on the clay, then rose and briefly pulled his blue shirt over his face. He was again the champion, again unbeatable at the French Open. Nadal is no longer the 19-year-old he was when he won his first French Open title in his tournament debut in 2005, wearing long white pirate shorts, his flowing locks wrapped by a white headband, his sleeveless shirt revealing bulging biceps. The shorts are shorter, the hair more closely cropped, the shirt has sleeves. But his game? Somehow, better.

Nadal also won Roland Garros in 2006, 2007 and 2008, then after a fourth-round loss on bad knees in 2009, he grabbed a record five in a row from 2010-14. A quarterfinal loss in 2015 ended that run, then came last year’s injury.

His return to a final in Paris was a meeting of two of the most respected shots in the men’s game: Nadal’s spin-heavy, high-bouncing uppercut of a forehand vs. Wawrinka’s one-handed, power-packed backhand, delivered with such force that the thud of racket-meets-ball sounds like a leather-bound encyclopedia volume — remember those? — being dropped on a wood desk.

So Nadal stayed away from that side early, going instead after Wawrinka’s forehand. It worked: Of the first seven points won by Nadal, six ended with missed forehands by Wawrinka.

One area of significant improvement for Nadal over the years is his serve. Once passable, it is now potent. So when confronted with the first break point for either man, 10 minutes in, he solved the predicament this way: service winner at 107 mph (173 kph), ace at 117 mph (189 kph), service winner at 120 mph (194 kph). Wawrinka would never see another break chance.

When the ball was in play, Nadal barely missed at all. His groundstrokes were delivered with loud, long grunts, echoing in the otherwise mostly silent Court Philippe Chatrier, filled with 15,000 or so souls too rapt to speak. They let out a burst of claps and roars in the second set on one particularly exquisite display: Wawrinka smacked a cross-court backhand to a corner, and Nadal sprinted to his left to get to the ball, wide of the doubles alley, and whip a forehand that curved around the net post and landed near a line for a winner.

Even Wawrinka applauded that one.

“Nothing to say about today,” Wawrinka told Nadal during the trophy ceremony. “You were too good.”-AP

PARIS, June 11: Right from the start of the French Open final, Jelena Ostapenko made quite clear to anyone unfamiliar with her name, or her game, what she is all about.

Yes, she was just two days past her 20th birthday. Yes, she was ranked only 47th. Yes, she was trying to become the first unseeded women’s champion at the tournament since — get this — 1933. And yes, she was trying to become the first woman in nearly four decades to make a Grand Slam title the first tour-level triumph of her career. None of that mattered to Ostapenko.

She began what would become an enthralling, 2-hour encounter by breaking No. 3-seeded Simona Halep at love with a series of grip-it-and-rip-it shots, eliciting loud, appreciative gasps from spectators. So what if Ostapenko wound up dropping that set, then facing big deficits in the second and third? Ostapenko never wavered, using bold strokes and an unbending will to come back and stun Halep 4-6, 6-4, 6-3 for an unlikely championship at Roland Garros.

“Before the match, 5-10 minutes, I was a little bit nervous,” said Ostapenko, the first Latvian to win a major. “But then, when I went on court, I felt quite free.”

Halep, a 25-year-old from Romania, was the 2014 French Open runner-up and would have moved up to No. 1 in the WTA rankings if she had won Saturday. She appeared headed for a runaway victory when up a set and 3-0 in the second, plus holding three break points for the chance to lead 4-0. But Ostapenko would not go quietly, winning that game and the next three en route to forcing a third set.

“I felt a little bit nervous,” said Ostapenko, the first woman since Jennifer Capriati in 2001 to win the French Open after losing the final’s opening set. “But then I felt: ‘I have nothing to lose, so I’m just going to enjoy the match and do my best.’”

She again summoned a veteran’s resolve down 3-1 in the third set, taking the match’s last five games and, fittingly, striking a pair of winners on the last two points.

“Enjoy, be happy, and keep it going,” Halep told Ostapenko during the trophy ceremony , “because you’re like a kid.”

Sure is. Quite a precocious one.

Ostapenko was playing in only her eighth Grand Slam tournament and never had been past the third round before. Clay isn’t even her preferred surface — she likes grass better, and won the Wimbledon junior title in 2014 — which made this two-week joyride even more unpredictable.

Consider: Last year in Paris, Ostapenko lost in the first round. The year before that, she lost in the first round of qualifying.

“Everybody knows she can play very good, but I think nobody expected (her) to (do) what she did,” said Anabel Medina Garrigues, who began coaching Ostapenko in April.

Asked why Ostapenko never won a WTA Tour event until now, Medina Garrigues began answering, then interrupted herself after 10 words and laughed.

“I mean, I don’t know,” she said. “Actually, it’s something I cannot understand. It’s unbelievable.”

The last woman to win her first tour-level title at a major was Barbara Jordan at the 1979 Australian Open. Not coincidentally, that was also the last time at any Grand Slam tournament that none of the women’s quarterfinalists had previously won a major championship.

So Ostapenko stepped into the considerable opening created by the absences of Serena Williams (who is pregnant) and Sharapova (denied a wild card after a drug ban). Also missing was two-time major champ Victoria Azarenka, while No. 1 Angelique Kerber lost in the first round.

Ostapenko burst onto the scene with a brash brand of tennis. Accenting shots with high-pitched exhales, she likes points quick. The impatience of youth not only showed up in Ostapenko’s play but also, occasionally, in her demeanor. When she’d miss, she would slap her thigh or crack her racket on the red clay or raise a palm as if to say, “What was up with that shot?”

Things went her way to the tune of 54 winners, a remarkably high total that was 46 more than the defensive-minded Halep. Ostapenko also made 54 unforced errors, to Halep’s 10.

When Ostapenko is at her best, Halep’s coach, Darren Cahill said, “You don’t touch the ball. You become a spectator.”

A telling statistic: Of the 33 points Halep won in the first set, only one came via a winner off her racket.

Still, there were plenty of entertaining points during the back-and-forth match between the disparate styles, played in a slight breeze with the temperature at about 80 degrees (above 25 Celsius) and with nary a cloud marking the azure sky.

But the difference on this day: Halep faded at the end of the second and third sets, while Ostapenko surged, bringing her mother — a tennis instructor who taught young Jelena how to play — to tears in the stands.

“I’ve been sick in the stomach with emotion,” Halep said. “Maybe I was not ready to win it.”

Ostapenko certainly was ready, sooner than even she could imagine.