Rafael Nadal marks another amazinf record. Just for eighteen years and specifically since 4 April 2005, the Spanish phenomenon has been part of the Top 20. We are talking about 6300 days, exactly 900 weeks. In short: since he entered it on the eve of the victories in Monte-Carlo, Rome and Paris he has never gone out again.
Subsequently he has not only become a mainstay of the phenomenal generation, but he has won everything there was to win. In short, Miami and the Finals aside, where he never managed to go beyond the final. The Spaniard ended 2022 in second position in the ranking, touching up another couple of records.
Rafael Nadal marks a crazy new record
It is useless even to add that with a better result at the US Open than in the round of 16 and the passage of the group round at the Finals in Turin, with very good chances at the age of thirty-seven he would have sensationally closed the lead in a ranking in any case drugged by the absence of Djokovic, forced to miss the Australian and North American trips at the same time and who hasn’t seen a single point since the victory in Wimbledon given the rules of the Championships, which had decided to exclude Russians and Belarusians from the tournament.
The Spaniard then missed the Davis Cup Finals to devote himself to a series of exhibitions in South America together with Casper Ruud. In short: let’s rewind the tape to April 4, 2005 to find an eighteen-year-old Rafa Nadal in seventeenth position in the ranking ahead of Massu after the first large portion of the season, topped off by the final in Miami.
Behind Philippoussis and Ancic. Younger than 18-year-old Nadal at the top end of the league was 22-year-old Tommy Robredo. World number one obviously Roger Federer, followed by Lleyton Hewitt and above all by Andy Roddick. To close the Top 5 Marat Safin and Tim Henamn.
To understand the extraordinary nature of Nadal’s numbers, perhaps appealing to the cold ranking could be quite exhaustive. Or at least add something. Disconnecting from the myriad of titles, records and above all from the twenty-two Grand Slams hooked up by the Spanish champion. Two of which harpooned this year, eighteen years after the first between the Australian Open and the Roland Garros.
