To understand the extraordinary of Rafael Nadal’s numbers, perhaps appealing to the cold ranking is exhaustive enough. Or at least add something. Disconnecting from the innumerable titles, records and, above all, the twenty-two Slams achieved by the Spanish phenomenon.
Two of them harpooned this year, eighteen years after the first between the Australian Open and Roland Garros. For precisely eighteen years, and specifically since April 4, 2005, the Spanish phenomenon has been in the Top 20.
We are talking about 6,300 days, exactly 900 weeks. In short: since she entered it on the eve of his victories in Monte-Carlo, Rome and Paris, it has never left. Subsequently, he has not only become a pillar of the generation of the phenomenon, but he has won everything there is to win.
Miami and Finals apart, anyway, where he never made it past the final. The Spaniard finished 2022 in the second position of the ranking, close to another couple of records: It is useless to even add that with a better result in the US Open than the round of 16 and the passage of the round of 16 in Turin, in all probability to Thirty-seven years old would have ended resoundingly at the head of a classification in any case ‘drugged’ by the absence of Djokovic, who was forced to miss tournaments in Australia and North America and who has not seen a single point since his victory in Wimbledon, given the rules of the Championship, which had decided to exclude Russians and Belarusians from the tournament.
The Spaniard then did not participate in the Davis Cup final to dedicate himself to a series of exhibitions in South America with Casper Ruud. In summary: let’s rewind the tape to April 4, 2005 to find an 18-year-old Rafa Nadal in 17th position in the ranking ahead of Massu after the first important part of the season, capped off by the Miami final.
Nadal concluded his Latin American tour
Rafael Nadal concluded his Latin American tour in Mexico on Friday. “When I’m in Mexico I don’t feel like a stranger, I don’t feel like a foreigner, in the end when you’re in a country where we speak the same language and there are more things that unite us, when I arrive here I feel at home,” he said.
“The reception of the people I feel is spectacular. It is a country where people know how to have fun, a happy country. And well, in all the places I have been in the country in Cozumel, Tulum, Playa Mujeres, and Acapulco, I have always been happy, I have always taken good memories of the places, but also of the people, of the food, of everything, and that always encourages me to come back,” he added.
