Rafael Nadal

Rafael Nadal

Rafael Nadal was born on June 3, 1986. He is a Spanish professional tennis player. He is the current number 1. Some even consider him one of the greatest tennis players of all time. He has the nickname “King of Clay” due to his success on clay, and he has had many sports journalists, commentators, former and current players call him the greatest clay court player in history. Nadal’s winnings include 13 Grand Slam single titles, the 2008 Olympic gold medal in ingles, a record 26 ATP World Tour Masters 1000, and a record 14 ATP World Tour 500 tournaments. Besides these winnings, Nadal is also a member of the winning Spain Davis Cup team in 2004, 2008, 2009, and 2011. In 2010, Nadal became the 7th player in history and youngest of 4 in the Open Era to achieve the Career Grand Slam. Nadal is the only male player to have won a single Grand Slam tournament 8 times in the 2013 French Open. He has also brought a lot of pride for Spain because he is the first Spanish player to rank as number 1 for more than 100 weeks, he is the only Spanish player to have won career golden slam, the first Spanish male player to win Australian Open and second Spanish male player to have won Wimbledon and US open.

Nadal was always excellent at tennis since a young age. At 15 years, in April 2002, Nadal was number 762 in the world, but won his first ATP match, defeating Ramon Delgado, thus becoming the ninth player in the Open Era to do so before the age of 16. In 2003, Nadal won 2 Challenger titles which made him finish in the top 50, playing him over 700 titles above his original rank. One of his biggest early achievements, however, was becoming the youngest man to reach the third round at his Wimbledon debut in 2003, which hadn’t been done since Boris Becker in 1984.Currently, the year 2013 has also been very successful for Nadal. Two weeks before the 2013 Australian Open, Nadal had to withdraw from the tournament due to sickness, which made him drop out of the ATP’s Top...