2024-04-23 23:49:15
Mother dear, I will play with Nadal!
This is what a 16-year-old American wrote after finding out that he will play with the winner of 22 Grand Slam titles at the Masters 1000 tournament in Madrid.
The great hope of tennis in the USA Darwin Blanch has so far only one official match in the main draw of a tournament on the ATP calendar. According to the statistics, the gap of 21 years and 117 days between the two rivals is the largest for a match in this category since the introduction of the Masters series in 1990.
Blanch trains at the Juan Carlos Ferrero academy alongside Carlos Alcaraz and is a client of the world’s largest management agency IMG, which owns the tournament in Madrid. The American made his main draw debut in Miami, where he lost to Tomasz Makhach (Czech Republic).
Blanch is left-handed and has reached No. 4 in the world junior rankings. Last season, he reached the semi-finals of Roland Garros and Wimbledon, and at 14 years and 5 months, he is the second youngest player to score a point in the ATP rankings.
Darwin was born just 2 years after Nadal won his first Roland Garros title in 2005.