Rafael Nadal: King of the Clay Will Dominate 2012 French Open

Rafael Nadal is the king of the tennis clay court, and he's going to prove that yet again with epic performances at the 2012 French Open.

I write that as if we need more proof—which we certainly don't—but this tournament will serve as a good refresher course on how good Nadal really is.

The man is a superstar, and he'll be in his element at the French Open.

There was a time when Nadal was the undisputed best player in tennis, but that has been muddied by an epic rise to the top by Novak Djokovic, and even somewhat of a comeback by Roger Federer, who is currently No. 3 in ATP rankings

Since then Nadal has been battling for the spotlight, mainly with Djokovic, but make no mistake about it, the focus will be on him at the 2012 French Open.

Nadal has been on somewhat of a hot streak lately, so he's hitting the clay of the French Open at the perfect time. He has three titles under his belt this year, and two of the final wins came against Djokovic—one at the ATP Monte-Carlo Rolex Masters and the second at this month's ATP Internazionali BNL d'Italia.

In fact, if you were to negate his play on the odd blue clay at the Madrid Open, Nadal would have won three titles in a row. Even so, three out of his past four is not too bad.

As we all know, it's the big tournaments that matter though, and Djokovic has the Australian Open win over Nadal this year to his credit.

Nadal has a chance to find redemption for that major loss, though, with a good tournament at the French Open. It seems inevitable that he'll play well on the clay, and with his recent hot streak coming in, it wouldn't be a stretch to predict domination from the world No. 2.

After all, this is what Nadal does. He dominates his opponents on clay courts.

The 2012 French Open will serve as a reminder of that.