Photo caption, Nadal with the 2008 Wimbledon trophy.Item information
- Author, Katie Falkingham
- Author’s title, BBC Sport
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October 10, 2024
The great Rafael Nadal, considered one of the best tennis players in history, announced this Thursday that he will retire from the courts next November.
The 38-year-old Spanish athlete, who has won an incredible 22 Grand Slam titles (the second best record in history after Novak Djokovic), will make his last appearance in the Davis Cup final in Malaga.
Here we remember 10 of the most memorable moments in the career of one of the best athletes of recent times.
1. Nadal 1 – Federer 0: a historic rivalry begins in 2004
Few spectators of the third round match of the 2004 Miami Open knew that they were witnessing the beginning of one of the great rivalries in the history of sport: the number one tennis player in the world at that time, the Swiss Roger Federer, faced a Spanish teenager who was beginning to emerge.
His name was Rafael Nadal.
Ranked 34th in the ATP rankings, Nadal surprisingly defeated Federer 6-3, 6-3 in 70 minutes, ending a 12-match undefeated streak for the Swiss and becoming only the second player to beat him that season. after the British Tim Henman.
Federer “admitted” that he was impressed with what he had seen, while Nadal said that Federer had not given his best in that match.
He also doubted that this victory would appear in the newspaper headlines, because “it was already dawn in Spain.”
Nadal and Federer met another 39 times, with a balance of 24-16 in favor of the Spaniard (14-10 in finals).
2. Su primer Grand Slam: Roland Garros 2005
The year 2005 was the moment when tennis realized the talent of the Spanish player.
Demonstrating his power on clay, Nadal won 24 consecutive singles matches that year before arriving in Paris, surpassing Andre Agassi’s record for most consecutive victories.
By the time that year’s Roland Garros began, Nadal was already world number 5. And he beat Federer in the semifinal of that tournament on the day he turned 19.
In the final he defeated the Argentine Mariano Puerta in five sets to win his first Grand Slam, becoming the second player in history to win the French Open on his debut, as Mats Wilander did in 1982.
Additionally, he was the first male teenager to win a Grand Slam singles title since Pete Sampras did so at the 1990 US Open.
Nadal would finish that year in 2nd place in the ATP rankings, having won 11 singles titles, eight of which were on clay.
3. His first Wimbledon title, 2008
photo caption, Nadal won his first Wimbledon in 2008 against Federer.
By 2008, Nadal had twice reached the Wimbledon final and twice been defeated by the Swiss Roger Federer.
But the third time was the charm. Nadal arrived at the British tournament with a streak of 17 consecutive wins.
For his part, Federer arrived with the record of 231 weeks as world number one, but he had lost the Roland Garros final a couple of weeks earlier against Nadal himself.
It was a rainy day. But despite interruptions due to rainfall, the spectacle was memorable.
Considered by many, including legend John McEnroe, to be the greatest tennis match in history, Nadal defeated Federer in five epic sets that lasted four hours and 48 minutes.
It was Nadal’s first Grand Slam title outside of Roland Garros. And he would be the first player to win Roland Garros and Wimbledon in the same year since the Swede Bjorn Borg achieved it in 1980.
4. Gold medal and world number one
Photo caption, Nadal with his Beijing 2008 Gold medal.
Nadal’s victories in Paris and London made him the favorite to win the gold medal at the Beijing Olympics.
However, standing in the way was Novak Djokovic.
Federer was eliminated in the quarterfinals, which paved the way for the Spaniard, who beat Serbian Djokovic in the semifinals.
Nadal played the final of the Olympic tournament against the Chilean Fernando González.
Nadal won in three sets. In addition to winning the gold medal, he reached the number one position in the ATP ranking, ending the 237-week reign that the Swiss Roger Federer had.
5. First title in Australia, 2009
Photo caption, Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer in the final in Australia in 2009.
Nadal’s first Australian Open final marked his eighth appearance in a Grand Slam final, his seventh in a row against Federer.
To achieve this, he had to defeat his compatriot Fernando Verdasco in the semifinal in an epic match that had lasted nearly five hours, one of the longest in the history of the tournament.
In his first final on an artificial surface, he managed to beat Federer in five sets.
He became the first Spaniard to win the Australian Open and the first player in the Open era to win three Grand Slams on different surfaces in the same season.
For the Swiss it was a tough defeat: that victory would have given him his 14th Grand Slam title, which would have equaled the record held at that time by the American Pete Sampras.
That record would be pulverized by Federer, Djokovic and Nadal in the following years.
6. Big 4 wins, 2010
Photo caption, Nadal with the 2010 US Open trophy.
So far only eight men’s tennis players have managed to win at least once in the 4 main tournaments on the circuit: Wimbledon, Roland Garros, Australian Open and US Open.
That happened for Nadal in 2010, the year that the Spaniard considers to be the best of his professional career.
Also in the rain, he won his first US Open title by beating Serbian Novak Djokovic in four sets.
In this way he joined the exclusive group of players who had won the four major tennis tournaments.
It also made him the second tennis player to achieve the so-called “Carrera Grand Slam” gold, which includes the victory of the four major open titles in addition to the gold medal at the Olympics, which he had achieved in Beijing 2008.
The other had been the American Andre Agassi.
7. The tenth, 2017
After Nadal’s victory at Roland Garros in 2014, he had a three-year drought amid injuries. The Spaniard did not reach a Grand Slam final until the 2017 Australian Open, in which he was defeated by Federer.
However, it was the beginning of an incredible return: he won the tournaments in Monte Carlo, Barcelona and Madrid, before charging his batteries towards Paris.
In the final that year in Paris, the Spaniard defeated the Swiss Stan Wawrinka in three sets, achieving his 10th title in this tournament.
In addition, he became the first tennis player to win the same Grand Slam tournament ten times.
It was also his 15th major tournament title.
8. Back at the top of tennis in Australia, 2022
Caption, Nadal’s comeback at the 2022 Australian Open went down in history.
After a 2021 full of difficulties with an injury that was on the verge of removing him from tennis and having suffered from covid-19, Nadal traveled to play the 2022 Australian Open without having played more than two matches since August of the previous year.
But with the absences of Djokovic (who had been deported for not being vaccinated) and Federer, who was injured, Nadal won his second Australian Open by beating Daniil Medvedev in the final, in a match with a legendary comeback that lasted 5 hours and 24 minutes.
But it was not just another title. It was his 21st Grand Slam title, a record in the men’s category at the time.
“Without a doubt, it is one of the most exciting victories of my career. I am physically destroyed,” he said at the end of the match.
9. His 22nd Grand Slam, 2022
It would be only four months before 21 became 22.
And what was the best scenario for it? Well, Roland Garros.
After falling in the semi-finals a year earlier, 2022 was Nadal’s chance to regain his French Open crown, and he did so by beating Norway’s Casper Ruud 6-3, 6-3, 6-0 to extend his record to 14 titles in Paris.
With the final match two days after his 36th birthday, Nadal became the oldest French Open men’s singles champion, surpassing compatriot Andrés Gimeno, who was 34 when he triumphed in 1972.
The victory put him two Grand Slams ahead of Djokovic and Federer at the top of the list for the most “greats” in history with 22, a final figure now that he has announced his retirement.
10. The Last Dance with Roger, 2022
In September 2022, Roger Federer announced that he would retire after that month’s Laver Cup, a competition in which he teamed up with Nadal, Djokovic, Murray, Ruud and Tsitsipas in a European team that faced a team representing the rest of the world.
Perhaps it was appropriate, then, that his last match was a doubles duel alongside Nadal, for so long his fiercest rival, but also a good friend.
The pair, affectionately nicknamed ‘Fedal’, almost won their tie against the American duo of Jack Sock and Frances Tiafoe in London, missing a match point before victory slipped away.
Afterwards, Nadal and Federer could not contain their tears and the Swiss’s goodbye marked the beginning of the end of an era.
Now that Djokovic, 37, is the only member of the ‘Big Three’ still playing, the end of that era is getting closer.
“I’m even happier to end our career as friends after everything we shared on the court as rivals,” Nadal said of Federer.
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