From his first points as a professional more than two decades ago until his retirement in 2024, the myth of Rafael Nadal will remain forever in the imagination of every tennis fan. A legacy of improbable comebacks, epic battles and a catalog of inexplicable blows that has led him to mark an era on clay and dominate all surfaces at some point in his career. It is the footprint of an athlete subscribed to victory, a serial winner with more than a thousand on his record, many of which have been narrated in Morning Express by Alejandro Ciriza, the journalist who has been following his footsteps in the last decade of his career.
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Accustomed to telling the successes of the Balearic athlete, who has 92 titles in his showcase, 22 of them Grand Slam, Ciriza now proposes to tell the story from the other side of the net, the version of those who suffered Nadal the most. Ramón Delgado (Asunción, Paraguay, 47 years old) On April 29, 2002, he became Rafael Nadal’s first victim in an ATP tournament, the Mallorca Open.
David Ferrer (Xàbia, Alicante, 42 years old) He was the second tennis player who suffered the most defeats against the Balearic Islands, 26 of 32 matches played. Because of him he never won a major, nor a Godó, despite having faced each other in the final in Barcelona four times.
Richard Gasquet (Béziers, France, 38 years old) and Rafa Nadal were born 15 days apart in 1986 and started their careers in parallel. The two were young promises who aimed to dominate the elite of world tennis, but the 18 times they faced each other were resolved in the same way: with victory for the Spaniard.
