Rafael Nadal didn’t get off to a great start at the ATP Finals in Turin, losing to Taylor Fritz in straight sets. Rafa probably doesn’t know it, but he is celebrating a milestone in his rankings this week.
The 22-time major tournament winner is only the second player to have spent 1,000 consecutive weeks in the top 100, joining Roger Federer in the process. Nadal is synonymous with consistency and is approaching his 900th consecutive week in the top 10, having not left the elite group since April 2005.
Rafa broke into the top 100 two years earlier, and remains the last player to do so before turning 17 in the last 30 years. The 16-year-old Spaniard found himself in the top 100 in April 2003, skipping the junior events and preparing to challenge more experienced rivals on the professional circuit.
Going into the 2003 season outside the top-200, Rafa recorded 19 Challenger wins in the first three months and won his first title in Barletta. For his debut at the Masters 1000 in Monte-Carlo, he reached the third round.
He beat the defending Roland Garros winner and earned enough points to enter the top 100 as the youngest player in that group. Nadal picked up two wins at Hamburg and Wimbledon, advanced to the semi-finals at Umag and won the Segovia Challenger title to finish the season in the top 50.
At 17 years and six months, Rafa became the fourth youngest player since 1973 in this group, after Michael Chang, Aaron Krickstein and Bjorn Borg.
Carlos Moya talks about Nadal
Carlos Moya says Rafael Nadal didn’t seem any more gifted to him than other players his age when he first met him.
“He asked me if I would like to warm up with him. I did, for about an hour. To be honest, I didn’t feel like he was singularly better than the others. players his age.
I saw that he was very combative, but what was more surprising was that he was also incredibly shy. We met and shook hands, but he didn’t even look at me and barely said a syllable,” Moya said.
“It is true that he was probably a little intimidated, because I had been talked about in the media after reaching, without being seeded, the final of the Australian Open earlier that year.
But the contrast was still stark – shocking, in fact – between the shy little boy off the court and the super-competitive kid on the court, even though we were just making rallies, not even playing points,” he said. -he adds.
