At the Davis Cup Finals 2024 in Malaga (November 19-24), the impressive and extraordinary Rafael Nadal career will finally come to an end at the age of 38!
In his 21-year career, Nadal won a total of 92 tournaments and was ranked No. 1 in the world for 209 weeks. How much was his first prize money, where did he win his first ATP tournament, how many opponents did he play against and what records does he hold at Grand Slams and in the world rankings?
The craziest numbers & most important statistics of Rafael Nadal’s great career!
Rafael Nadal’s career: His prize money
- 134,946,100 US dollars is what Rafael Nadal has earned in his tennis career.
- His first prize money amounted to 107 euros (Madrid 2001).
- The most successful season in Rafael Nadal’s career in terms of prize money was 2017, when he won a total of 12,691,341 US dollars.
- In his last season in 2024, he earned 301,661 dollars in prize money.
Rafael Nadal titles: This is how many tournaments he has won
- Rafael Nadal has won a total of 92 tournaments in his professional tennis career. He won his first ATP title in 2004 as an 18-year-old in Sopot – on clay, of course.
- 22 Grand Slam tournaments have been won by Nadal, 14 of them at the French Open in Paris alone. Plus 2x Australian Open (2009, 2022), 2x Wimbledon (2008, 2010) and 4x US Open (2010, 2013, 2017, 2019).
- The year with the most titles won was 2005. Rafa won a total of eleven tournaments that year.
- Five Davis Cup victories in the great Rafael Nadal career. He became “Team World Champion” for the first time in 2004.
Crazy numbers about Nadal’s career
Rafael Nadal records: Rafa holds these best marks
Rafael Nadal has a plethora of records and best marks to his name. Be it at Grand Slam or Masters tournaments or in the world rankings.
Rafa is the only person in tennis history to have won all Grand Slam tournaments and the Olympic gold medal in both singles and doubles!
And: He has had 315 different opponents. He has a positive record against 294, a balanced record against 9 players and a negative record against 12 players. There are only two players he has never won against: Against his compatriot Alex Corretja and against the German Dustin Brown (both 0:2 record).
What other historical records has he set? Here is a small selection of Nadal’s biggest and most important records:
Nadal records at Grand Slams
- Nadal is one of eight players to have won all four Grand Slam tournaments in their career. In 2010, at the age of 24, he became the youngest player to do so in the Open Era. He is also one of four players to have won every Grand Slam tournament at least twice.
- He won the French Open fourteen times, a record for any Grand Slam tournament. And: He reached the final of the same Grand Slam tournament, the French Open, fourteen times, all of which he won.
- From 2005 to 2014, he won at least one Grand Slam tournament ten years in a row, breaking the record held by Björn Borg, Pete Sampras and Roger Federer (8).
- In 2010, he won the French Open, Wimbledon and the US Open, making him the first player to win titles on three different surfaces in one season. Novak Djokovic also achieved this in 2021.
- From the 2010 French Open to the 2018 French Open, Nadal won 16 Grand Slam semi-finals in a row, beating Björn Borg’s record of 14.
- In 15 seasons he won Grand Slam tournaments (2005-2014, 2017-2020, 2022).
- He is one of three players – alongside Pete Sampras and Ken Rosewall – to win Grand Slams both as a teenager and in their 20s and 30s.
- Only Nadal at the French Open (2008, 2010, 2017 and 2020) won four Grand Slam tournaments in the Open Era without dropping a set.
- Nadal is one of six players in the Open Era to have won the French Open and Wimbledon back-to-back – he did so in 2008 and 2010. Apart from him, Rod Laver, Björn Borg, Novak Djokovic, Roger Federer and Carlos Alcaraz have also achieved this.
Rafa’s best marks at Masters tournaments
- A total of 36 Masters titles were won in Rafael Nadal’s career.
- From 2005 to 2014, he won at least one Masters tournament ten years in a row.
- With eleven titles at the Monte-Carlo tournament, he holds the record for the most victories at a Masters1000 tournament. His eight successive victories there (2005-2012) are also a record.
- He is also the only player to win two Masters tournaments at least ten times (Monte Carlo and Rome).
- In 2010, Nadal became the first player to win all three clay court tournaments in one season (Monte Carlo, Rome and Madrid).
- In 2013, he won four Masters tournaments in a row (Rome, Madrid, Montreal and Cincinnati) within one season.
- 2013 Nadal also reached eight Masters semifinals in one year. Only Novak Djokovic also achieved this (2015).
Profile Rafael Nadal
This is how he dominated the world rankings
- He was No. 1 in the ATP world rankings for a total of 209 weeks. This puts him in 6th place in the all-time rankings.
- There are 11 years between his first season as number 1 (2008) and his last so far (2019).
- Four times in Rafael Nadal’s career he was able to return to No. 1 in the world rankings after interruptions at the end of the year.
- In addition, he was in the top 10 for the longest time in a row (912 weeks), ending a season in the top 10 18 times in a row (2005-2022).
- Nadal has held the record for the most wins against world number one players (23) since May 2019, overtaking Boris Becker with 19 wins.
