He is known as the king of clay with the second highest grand slam tally in the history of men’s tennis. Rafael Nadal is undoubtedly one of the greatest players in the history of the sport and to celebrate his birthday here is a by-the-numbers look at his career.
1 – He is the first and only man to have won five grand slam titles after turning 30.
3 – The number of Davis Cup finals Nadal has played in where Spain has won the title. He triumphed in 2009, 2008 and 2019. He was also part of the winning team in 2008 but played in the two rounds leading up to the final that year.
4 – The age he started playing tennis after being introduced to the sport by his uncle and former long-time coach Toni Nadal.
5 – The number of times he has finished a season ranked No.1. Only Pete Sampras has finished more seasons at the top of the rankings with six. Nadal also holds the record for oldest year-end No.1 player at 33 which he achieved last year.
9 – The age Nadal switched from a double-handed forehand to a single, according to his ATP bio.
12 – Nadal’s historic number of French Open titles. He is the only player – man or woman – to have won the same grand slam 12 times in history.
15 – He has qualified for the ATP Finals 15 season’s in a row between 2005-2019. However, in six of those years he hasn’t been able to play in the event due to injury.
16 – The number of consecutive seasons where he has won 30 or more matches which is the longest streak among active players
16 – Nadal has won at least one title 16 seasons in a row (2004-2019) in what is an Open Era record.
19 – The total number of Grand Slam titles won. Besides 12 French Open trophies, he has also won the US Open four times, Wimbledon twice and the Australian Open once.
22 – His winning streak against Russian players on the Tour. The last person from the country to beat him was Nikolay Davydenko at the 2011 Doha Open.
35 – The record number of Masters 1000 titles won by the Spaniard. His win-loss in the series currently stands at 384-79 and he has won more matches than any other player.
59 – How many ATP titles he has won on the clay in what is an Open Era record. The second highest is 49 trophies won by Argentina’s Guillermo Vilas.
85 – The percentage of service games Nadal has won on the clay throughout his entire career on the ATP Tour (as of 3/6/2020).
118-2 – Nadal’s impressive winning record when it comes to playing best-of-five matches on clay. His only losses were at the French Open to Robin Soderling in 2009 and Novak Djokovic in 2015. A full breakdown can be read here.
171 – Number of victories recorded over top 10 players, including 20 wins over a reigning No.1.
209 – The number of weeks Nadal has spent as world No.1. It is the sixth longest period in the history of men’s tennis in the Open era. He is the only Spanish man to have held the top spot for more than 10 weeks.
209 – 1 – Nadal’s almost perfect record when it comes to winning matches after taking the first two sets in a grand slam. The only time he lost was to Italy’s Fabio Fognini in the third round of the 2015 US Open.
778 weeks – The number of consecutive weeks Nadal has spent in the top 10. Incredibly 71% of that period (549 weeks) he has been in the top two. Only Jimmy Connors has spent a longer period in the top 10, which was 789 weeks between August 1973 and October 1988.
990 – Number of wins on the ATP Tour. Only Ivan Lendl (1068), Roger Federer (1242) and Jimmy Connors (1274) have won more.
2010 – The year he featured in Shakira’s music video as her love interest. The song Gypsy turned out to be a massive hit and was the ninth best selling single in Spain that year.
120,955,904 – How much prize money he has made so far in his career (in American dollars). The only tennis players to have earned more than him is Djokovic and Roger Federer.
