Rafael Nadal He does not want to rush his return to the slopes. “Patience”, she has been saying the times that she has been seen in public. Open the Australia He suffered an iliopsoas injury in his left leg and decided to focus on getting fit for the European clay court tour, which is usually the most important part of the year for him. The last image of him on social networks of him is on his favorite surface and with a medium coded message that meant that he is working to return. It is scheduled to do so in Montecarlo, from April 9 to 16. It didn’t make sense for him to force and go to play on hard court to Indian Wells y Miami. Although Rafa has been looking at his body for a long time before looking at the ranking, by missing the first two Masters 1,000 of the course he puts an end to a spectacular streak that speaks of the legend that is Spanish: he is left out of the “top 10” 18 years later. Rafa entered the select list on April 25, 2005, the day after winning the Godó final at Juan Carlos Ferreroand jumped from 11th to 7th place in the season in which a month and a half later he would win Roland Garros for the first time… And there are already 14.
From there, he has always remained in the top ten, which is quite a sample of regularity in a tennis player who was told at the beginning that he was going to have a short career due to chronic damage to his left foot. He has had injuries, half-year breaks like the one in 2012 or the one in 2021; Since he played the first Grand Slam in 2003, he has missed 11, plus Wimbledon 2020, which was not played due to the pandemic, but not even that made him leave the “top 10”. The closest he came was in 2015: between June 8 and July 27 he closed that list of the chosen ones, he was tenth, after falling in the quarterfinals in Paris against Djokovic and in the second round of Wimbledon. With everything he has fought against his body, that year the problem was mental, loss of confidence, anxiety, as he later confessed, but he also managed to come back from there. In 2015 and 2016 she did not conquer any Grand Slam, but later he has added eight more, for the 22 that currently appear in his record. Only in those two years and in 2021 the Spaniard has closed the course without a “Great” in his backpack, since he won the first one in 2005.
Nadal woke up today as the thirteenth classified, unable to defend the 600 points from last year’s final in Indian Wells, so the streak remains at 912 consecutive weeks in the “top 10”, something they cannot presume neither Djokovic in Federer nor anyone, since in their moments of downturn they did come out of the top ten, and then come back. The absolute record is held by Federer with 946 weeks (734 in a row). Jimmy Connors he was the one with the previous best record of weeks without failure, with 789. Novak Djokovic was 555 between 2008 and 2017, when elbow problems forced him to stop and drop even to 22nd place in 2018, until he finally had surgery . Of course, the Serbian is the one who has been at number one for the most total weeks: he goes for 380.
When Alcaraz was not even two years old…
Since Nadal entered the “top 10” until he left, 6,538 days, 215 months or 934 weeks have elapsed, but we must discount the 22 in which the ranking was frozen due to the pandemic in 2020, hence the record of the left-handed is 912. He has gone through all the positions of those top ten and 209 of those weeks have been as number one, in eight different stages. The first time he took the crown was after a long wait: between July 25, 2005 and August 18, 2008, he was number two, chasing Roger Federer, until his victory in the Wimbledon final in he party of the century took him to the top. It became effective after conquering the Olympic gold at the Beijing Games Beijing.
By the way, ten days after that April 25, 2005, when Rafa entered the “top 10” for the first time, Carlos Alcaraz was two years old. In May, the Murcian will turn 20, and Nadal continues there in the elite.