7 reasons Rafael Nadal will be one of the biggest threats at Wimbledon this year

Rafael Nadal may be best known for dominating Roland Garros, but the 22-time Grand Slam champion is a major threat at all four of the majors—and he’s most definitely one of the biggest threats at Wimbledon this year.

Here are seven reasons why:

He’s won Wimbledon before—twice. Nadal is one of only four active men’s players to have won Wimbledon, doing it in 2008 and 2010. And with eight-time champion Roger Federer still not back in action yet from his knee injury lay-off, Nadal is going to be one of only three former champions in the men’s draw this year, along with six-time champion Novak Djokovic and fellow two-time winner Andy Murray.

He’s been to another three finals. With runner-up finishes in 2006 (to Federer), 2007 (to Federer) and 2011 (to Djokovic) to go along with his two titles, Nadal is actually one of only 13 men in the entire history of the tournament—since 1877, exactly 145 years ago—to have reached five (or more) finals at the All-England Club.

He almost made another two finals the last two times he played, too. Nadal reached the semifinals in his last two appearances at Wimbledon in 2018 and 2019, and he was just barely beaten in the first of those two semifinals against Djokovic, holding five break points in the fifth set before ultimately falling, 6-4, 3-6, 7-6 (9), 3-6, 10-8, after five hours and 15 minutes. Federer handled him slightly more comfortably in the 2019 semifinals, 7-6 (3), 1-6, 6-3, 6-4, after three hours and two minutes.

Wimbledon was actually the second of the four majors he won. Nadal’s first four majors all came at Roland Garros in 2005, 2006, 2007 and 2008, and a few weeks after that fourth title in Paris he won his first Wimbledon title, outlasting Federer in an epic final, 6-4, 6-4, 6-7 (5), 6-7 (8), 9-7. He won his first Australian Open title the next year in 2009, and his first US Open title the year after that in 2010.

He’s pulled off the Roland Garros-Wimbledon double twice before. He achieved one of the toughest doubles in tennis in 2008 and 2010, which was when there was only a two-week grass court lead-up season between the two. He’s one of just two men in the Open Era to pull off the Roland Garros-Wimbledon double multiple times, alongside Bjorn Borg, who did it three straight years in 1978, 1979 and 1980.

He has a 78% winning percentage on grass. He’s 71-20 on grass in his career, or .780. Only four active men’s players have a better career winning percentage on this surface: Federer (.869), Djokovic (.850), Matteo Berrettini (.846) and Murray (.826).

And finally, not only is he an undefeated 14-0 at Grand Slams in 2022, he’s actually the only man to even reach the quarterfinals or better at the first two majors of the year. Nobody has raised their level at the majors this year like Nadal, as he’s won the Australian Open and Roland Garros in the same year for the first time in his career.