The Spanish tennis player Rafa Nadal will bid farewell to tennis with a track record that borders on excellence, with only one major title that eluded him, but which undoubtedly places him as one of the greatest in history and within one of the highest-level eras in this sport.
The Manacor native stood out very soon since his entry into the circuit in 2022, at almost 16 years old, at home, at the ATP in Mallorca, and it did not take long for him to confirm the expectations that were placed on him. Two years later, in Sopot (Poland), on clay, he lifted the first of his 92 titles against the Argentine José Acasuso, the fifth most in history after Jimmy Connors, Roger Federer, Novak Djokovic and Ivan Lendl), which add to his career in 2004, when he had already begun to build his legend in a Davis Cup that he would win for the first time months later in Seville against the United States.
And from then on his greatest successes began to arrive, with his first ‘Grand Slam’ in 2005, Roland Garros, against the Argentine Mariano Puerta. On the red clay of Paris he was, and is, the ‘king’, because to that first triumph he added another 13 more (2006, 2007, 2008, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020 and 2022), all of them spread over several stages and with the last one, also of his career in 2022, a year where he signed one of the most epic comebacks against the Russian Daniil Medvedev in the final of the Australian Open to achieve at least two of each of the ‘great’ titles. The other triumph in Melbourne was in 2009, leaving Roger Federer in tears.
The Manacor native ended his journey in Paris with 112 wins and only four losses and proved to be the best on red clay where he amassed 81 consecutive victories between 2005 and 2007. In 2008 he also managed to emulate the Swede Bjorn Borg by winning the Roland Garros-Wimbledon double in the same year, defeating the Swiss Roger Federer in another of his most memorable finals and which is part of the modern history of tennis. A double that he would repeat in 2010, in a year that would be the one in which he would win the most ‘grands’, three, by lifting the first of his four US Opens (2010, 2013, 2017 and 2019) to complete the ‘Grand Slam’ at 24 years old.
But apart from the ‘big ones’, Nadal also says goodbye with a total of 36 Masters 1000 titles, eleven of them in Monte Carlo, only surpassed by Novak Djokovic’s 40, and without being able to lift the ones in Shanghai and Paris-Bercy, while he also won two Olympic golds, the singles in 2008 against the Chilean Fernando González and the doubles with Marc López in 2016. Of the considered great titles, only the ‘masters tournament’ resisted him, with only two finals, in 2010 and 2013.
And despite the demands of the calendar and injuries, he almost always lent a hand in the Davis Cup, which he has lifted on five occasions (2004, 2008, 2009, 2011 and 2019) and where he has not lost a singles match since his debut in February 2004 against the Czech Jiri Novak.
He finished the season as world number one on five occasions (2008, 2010, 2013, 2017 and 2019), in one of the most important eras in the history of tennis, marked above all by his rivalry with the Swiss Roger Federer and the Serbian Novak Djokovic, his great rivals as demonstrated by their numerous clashes. On 40 occasions he faced the player from Basel, with a favourable record of 24-16, and on 60 occasions against the player from Belgrade, with an unfavourable record of 29-31.
In total, he has amassed 1,080 victories, the fourth most behind Connors, Federer and Djokovic, with only 227 defeats, and in terms of recognitions he won the Prince of Asturias Award for Sports in 2008, the National Sports Award for Best Sportsman on three occasions and received the Grand Cross of Sporting Merit.
