Happy birthday, Rafa! 37 stats for Rafael Nadal’s 37th birthday

Rafael Nadal may not be playing at Roland Garros this year, but there’s no reason we can’t celebrate him turning 37 years young today! Here’s a stat for each one of his 37 birthdays so far:

1 is for No. 1, where Rafa has spent a total of 209 career weeks.

2 is for his two Australian Open titles (2009 and 2022) and two Wimbledon titles (2008 and 2010). He’s one of only four men in tennis history—alongside Roy Emerson, Rod Laver and Novak Djokovic—to have a Double Career Slam, meaning winning all four majors at least twice each.

3 is for Rafa being the only tennis player ever to win multiple Grand Slam titles in three different decades, capturing six in the 2000s, 13 in the 2010s and three in the 2020s. He’s also the only player in ATP rankings history to be ranked No. 1 in three different decades (the same three decades).

4 is for his four US Open titles in 2010, 2013, 2017 and 2019. He’s tied with John McEnroe for fourth-most US Open titles for a man in the Open Era (Jimmy Connors, Pete Sampras and Roger Federer have the most with five each).

5 is for his five year-end No. 1 finishes in 2008, 2010, 2013, 2017 and 2019. He’s tied with Connors and Federer for third-most in ATP rankings history, after Djokovic (seven) and Sampras (six).

6 is for the number of different partners he’s won his 11 career ATP doubles titles with. Among those titles are an Olympic gold medal in Rio (with Marc Lopez) and three Masters 1000 titles (two with Lopez and one with Tommy Robredo). He’s also won titles with Pablo Carreno Busta, Juan Monaco, Albert Costa and Alex Lopez Moron.

7 is for becoming the seventh man in tennis history to complete a Career Slam, which he achieved at the 2010 US Open. The first six men to do it were Fred Perry, Don Budge, Laver, Emerson, Andre Agassi and Federer, and Djokovic has since become the eighth. And because he had already won Olympic gold at Beijing in 2008, Nadal was only the second man to complete a Career Golden Slam (after Agassi).

8 is for his eight different stints at No. 1, the first one starting when he was 22 (in August 2008) and the most recent one ending when he was 33 (in February 2020).

9 is for when he became just the ninth man in the Open Era to win a tour-level match before his 16th birthday, which he achieved as a No. 762-ranked, 15-year-old wild card at his home event in Mallorca in 2002, defeating No. 81-ranked Ramon Delgado, 6-4, 6-4.

10 is for his all-time record 10 career titles in Rome, in 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2010, 2012, 2013, 2018, 2019 and 2021.

11 is for his all-time record 11 career titles in Monte Carlo, in 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2016, 2017 and 2018.

12 is for his all-time record 12 career titles in Barcelona, in 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2016, 2017, 2018 and 2021.

13 is for Rafa being the only player in the Open Era, male or female, to win the same tour-level event 13 or more times. Which leads us to…

14 is for the ridiculous amount of times Rafa has won Roland Garros, lifting the Coupe des Mousquetaires in 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020 and 2022. No tennis player has ever dominated a single tournament like Nadal has dominated Roland Garros.

15 is the number of different years he’s won at least one Grand Slam title, an all-time men’s record. He also won at least one major for 10 consecutive years from 2005 to 2014, also an all-time men’s record.

16 is for his 16 year-end Top 5 finishes, tied with Federer for the most in ATP rankings history.

17 is for 17 years, 10 months and 23 days, the period Rafa was in the Top 10 from April 25th, 2005 to March 20th, 2023 without dropping out even for one week. It was the longest Top 10 streak in ATP rankings history.

18 is for the number of different countries he’s won ATP titles in, namely Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Monaco, Poland, Qatar, Spain, Sweden, the United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom and United States.

19 is for 19 years and 2 days, which is how old he was when he captured his first Grand Slam title at Roland Garros in 2005. He’s still the youngest man to win a major since a 17-year-old Michael Chang won in Paris in 1989.

20 is for 20-0, which is how he started his historic 2022 season, winning his first three tournaments of the year at the Melbourne Summer Set, Australian Open and Acapulco and getting all the way to the Indian Wells final before his streak was finally snapped by Taylor Fritz. It was the best start to a season in his career.

21 is for 21-11, which is Nadal’s combined record at majors against the other two members of the Big 3, Federer (10-4) and Djokovic (11-7).

22 is for Rafa’s 22 career Grand Slam titles, which is tied for the men’s all-time record (with Djokovic).

23 is for 23 career wins over No. 1-ranked players, which is the most in either ATP or WTA rankings history. He defeated Federer 13 times when he was No. 1 and Djokovic 10 times when he was No. 1.

24 is for how old Rafa was when he completed his Career Slam at the 2010 US Open, the youngest man in the Open Era to achieve the feat.

25 is for how many hard-court titles he’s won in his career, a total that includes six majors and 10 Masters 1000 titles on the surface.

26 is for his 26 career Masters 1000 titles on clay, the most in history.

27 is how old he was when he won the Masters 1000 summer sweep in 2013, winning in Canada and Cincinnati back-to-back. He was just the fourth man ever to win those two events in the same year, joining Agassi (1995), Patrick Rafter (1998) and Andy Roddick (2003).

28 is for the 28-minute, 16-14 tie-break he somehow won against Adrian Mannarino in the fourth round of the 2022 Australian Open, fighting off four set points and finally clinching it on his seventh set point on the way to a 7-6 (14), 6-2, 6-2 victory over the Frenchman, and on the way to what would be his record-breaking 21st career Grand Slam title.

29 is for Rafa’s 29-match Davis Cup singles winning streak, which is actually the third-longest in the history of the competition (after Marcos Baghdatis’ 36 and Bjorn Borg’s 33). He lost his first singles rubber as a 17-year-old in 2004 and has won 29 straight since.

30 is for reaching 30 career Grand Slam finals, with an incredible .733 winning percentage in them (22-8).

31 is for 31-0, which was his career record at Roland Garros when he finally lost a match there, falling to Robin Soderling in the fourth round in 2009. He hasn’t done much losing there since, either—he currently has a 112-3 (not a typo) career record at the clay-court major.

32 is for Rafa’s career-best winning streak in 2008, which began in Hamburg and ended in Cincinnati, spanning three different surfaces—he notched 12 wins on clay, 12 wins on grass and another eight wins on hard courts before Djokovic finally snapped it in the Cincy semis.

33 is for 33%, the percentage of return games he’s won in his career. And that number hikes up to 43% on clay.

34 is for the number of quarterfinals in a row Rafa reached at Grand Slams and Masters 1000 events between 2017 and 2022, coincidentally book-ended by defeats to Denis Shapovalov in Canada in 2017 and Rome in 2022. He reached the quarters or better at every single major and Masters 1000 in that span.

35 is for how old Rafa was when he completed his Double Career Slam, when he ended a 13-year dry spell Down Under and battled his way to the 2022 Australian Open title.

36 is for 36 career Masters titles, which is the second-most all-time after Djokovic (38) and ahead of Federer (28), Agassi (17) and Andy Murray (14).

And finally, 37 is not only for the combined total of trophies he’s lifted at his three best tournaments (14 at Roland Garros, 12 in Barcelona and 11 in Monte Carlo), or for the number of Grand Slam semifinals he’s played in his career (going 30-7 in those), but of course it’s for his 37th birthday, and the age at which he’s (hopefully) going to return to action later this year or next season!