One of the great curiosities left by the draw for Madrid Open was the rival he will face Rafael Nadal for the first round of Masters 1000 Spanish. The one who will have to face the former No. 1 is nothing more and nothing less than a 16-year-old young man: Darwin Blanch.
Darwin Blanch, Rafael Nadal’s next rival at the Madrid Open. getty
Being just a teenager (cat. 2007), this American from Deerfield Beach (Florida) only played one ATP event in his entire career: the Miami Open 2024. Before that, he played a handful of Challengers tournaments and ITF championships, being He is also a semi-finalist in two Junior Grand Slam events such as Wimbledon and Roland Garros, both in 2023.
Related
2 Related
However, there is a fact from the childhood of Darwin Blanch, prior to all this news that he is experiencing in the professional world and that ties him to South American tennis, more precisely to the Argentine Republic. And this link coincides with his father of Spanish origin, Ernesto Blanch.
CEO of an important and renowned international soft drink company, Ernesto and his family lived in several countries around the world. One of them was Thailand, where everyone His children started playing tennis with Argentine teachers. After that small contact with the Latin American country, all the Blanchs undertook the trip to the capital of the Albiceleste nation: Buenos Aires.
According to the Argentine media Clarion, Darwin settled with his parents and siblings in the Buenos Aires neighborhood of Núñez, in front of the Tennis Training Camp (CET) that operated in the Argentine Federal Shooting Center. And at only 9 years old, he began to become known in the children’s categories of national tennis. So much so that the CET chose to give him a private coach named Martín Pérez, with whom he shared a beautiful moment during his stay in Buenos Aires, which he treasured on his personal Instagram account. That situation occurred in La Bombonera, wearing the Club Atlético Boca Juniors shirt and watching an official match of the cast Xeneize.
The best of tennis, by Star+
The big stars and the most notable tournaments are enjoyed live on Star+.
However, everything changed when the Covid-19 pandemic started at the beginning of 2020 and Darwin was 12 years old. His father chose to move to Australia, Taiwan, the United States (he was in the USTA in Orlando) and then Spain, in a true globe-trotting journey. And in this European nation, the protagonist of our history He stayed in Manacor to train at Rafael Nadal’s academy and then moved to Alicante to do the same at Juan Carlos Ferrero’s school, where he came to live with none other than Carlos Alcaraz.
In fact, when Blanch celebrated his first ATP point, the current world number three replied through social networks congratulating him: “I’m so happy for you, man, even though you beat me to it.” This advance that Alcaraz was referring to had to do with the fact that Darwin was left with that first unit at 14 years and three months, surpassing what was obtained by the Murcian who achieved the same at 14 years and nine months.
Darwin’s future is of course still unknown. At 16 years old and ranked No. 1028 in the ATP world ranking (No. 10 in the ITF Juniors), he will seek to overthrow one of the best players in the history of tennis and the most outstanding of all on the Madrid brick dust. the times on this surface…Can it?
2024-04-24 22:44:00
#Darwin #Blanch #story #Argentine #ties #Rafael #Nadals #rival
