Rafael Nadal made his Top 10 debut on this day 17 years ago and hasn’t left the elite since

It’s already been a record-breaking year for Rafael Nadal—he won his 21st Grand Slam title at the Australian Open, breaking a three-way tie with Roger Federer and Novak Djokovic to set the new men’s record for most Grand Slam titles in tennis history.

And today, he reaches another historic milestone: Nadal has now been ranked in the Top 10 of the ATP rankings non-stop for 17 years.

He first broke into the Top 10 as an 18-year-old on April 25th, 2005, rising from No. 11 to No. 7 after winning the first of his now-12 career titles in Barcelona. And despite all of his injuries over the years—he’s missed two Australian Opens, three Wimbledons and four US Opens since then—he’s never left the Top 10, not even for a week.

Today, a 35-year-old Nadal is ranked No. 4.

He’s held the record for longest Top 10 streak in ATP rankings history since November 2020, when he surpassed Jimmy Connors’ previous record of just over 15 years.

MOST CONSECUTIVE WEEKS IN TOP 10 IN ATP RANKINGS HISTORY (incl. this week):
866 weeks: Rafael Nadal (2005-present)
789 weeks: Jimmy Connors (1973-1988)
741 weeks: Roger Federer (2002-2016)
619 weeks: Ivan Lendl (1980-1992)
565 weeks: Pete Sampras (1990-2001)

Nadal’s weeks in the above chart do not include the 22 weeks the ATP rankings were frozen between March and August in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Given everything he’s already accomplished in 2022, Nadal’s Top 10 streak is showing no signs of coming to an end anytime soon, either.

He got off to a blistering 20-0 start to the year, winning his first three tournaments at the Melbourne Summer Set (ATP 250), the Australian Open (Grand Slam) and Acapulco (ATP 500) and then reaching the final of Indian Wells (Masters 1000) before finally suffering his first loss of the year at the hands of American Taylor Fritz.

He’s accumulated a tour-leading 3,350 ranking points so far in 2022, which would have already been enough to see him finish in the year-end Top 10 in each of the last seven years (he would’ve been year-end No. 11 with that much in 2014).

And he hasn’t even begun playing on his best surface yet—he’s expected to return from a rib injury lay-off in Madrid next week.

Not that he hasn’t been almost unbeatable on hard courts this year, too.

But back to the stat at hand, Nadal’s 17 straight years in the Top 10—to put just how long that is in perspective, it’s worth noting that when his streak began, Emma Raducanu was two years old, Carlos Alcaraz and Coco Gauff were one year old, YouTube was just two months old and Twitter didn’t even exist.