5 Best Spanish Tennis Players

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5 Best Spanish Tennis Players

Spanish tennis is largely associated with Rafael Nadal, the leading player who has had successful consecutive seasons. The tennis courts in Spain are also famous because they are clay courts that have produced some of the best international stars in tennis.

Spanish professional tennis players are among the top 100 players in the ATP world rankings.

They have also won the most prestigious titles in tennis, and have had their training culture emulated by some top players from around the world. Britain’s Andy Murray trained in Spain as a teenager.

The tennis courts in Spain are outdoor clay courts. The tennis clubs in the country have been successful in promoting local championships through the Royal Spanish Tennis Federation.

Barcelona and Madrid are some of the Spanish cities that host top tennis tournaments in women’s and men’s professional circuits.

Let us now look at the 5 best Spanish tennis players.

1. Rafael Nadal

By Alberto Carrasco Casado -Wikimedia

Rafael Nadal is known the world over as one of the best and most successful professional tennis player. He is ranked as the world number 2 in men’s singles tennis by ATP. He is also the leading Spanish player in the country, he has won several Grand Slam titles and is fondly referred to as King of the Clay court.

Nadal has 19 Grand Slam singles titles and the second in the world to hold that title in the male category.

His other prestigious titles include 35 ATP Tour Masters 1000 titles. 21 ATP Tour 500 titles and a gold medal during the 2008 Olympics.

He has been able to hold the number one position in the world ranking for more than six months, he was additionally number 1 in year-end five successive times.

In the major’s category, he won a record twelve French Open titles, four US Open titles, two Wimbledon titles and one Australian Open title.

His winning streaks are quite impressive having held the Grand Slam singles title for 10 successive years. He holds the record for the longest single-surface win in the Open Era and won 81 titles on the clay court.

At 24, Nadal was the 7^th male player to and the youngest to achieve the singles career Grand Slam at the Opera Era.

He has also been named the tour Sportsmanship Award three times.

2. Emilio Sanchez

Emilio Sanchez is known as the captain of the David Cup, a position he held for 3 years and his leadership at one of the most successful tennis academies in the world.

During his active career as a professional tennis player, Emilio was one of the leading successful male tennis players in the 1980s and has been the inspiration to many established Spanish tennis players.

He grew up in Madrid and started playing professional tennis in 1984, he won his first high-level singles title in Nice, France in 1986. He won 15 singles titles during his career.

He has two siblings who followed his footsteps in excelling in the sport. In 1990, he was among the top 7 in the singles and was number one in the doubles winning the Grand Slam titles together with his long-time teammate Sergio Casal who is also his partner at the Casal-Sanchez tennis academy.

Emilio was very active in representing Spain during international team events. He was part of the Davis Cup team from the mid-1980s to mid-1990s. He was part of the Spanish team that won the Hopman Cup in 1990 and the world team cup in 1992.

He resigned from his position as the captain of the Spanish Davis Cup after they won the 2008 championship.

3. Juan Carlos Ferrero

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Juan Ferrero won only one French Open title during his active career as a professional tennis player.

He started playing tennis at a young age of 7 with his father. He met his coach, Antonio Martinez Cascales, three years later. The two worked together throughout his professional career, making him a champion in most of his matches.

He spent his training days at the academy of JCFerrero-Equelite in Villena.

When he was 13 and 14, Juan Ferrero won the junior world championships twice, he won the Les Petits Princes in Annecy, France and Les Petits As in Tarbes France in 1994.

After the death of his mother when he was 16, Juan contemplated quitting tennis, he continued and dedicated his wins to her.

His career as a junior champion was successful as he participated in several championships, his highlight being the finals at the Roland Garros Junior Championships in 1998, he lost to Fernando Gonzalez from Chile.

He is said to have been unmatched on the court and went ahead to win the French Open singles title in 2003.

He made it to the finals in the 2002 Grand Slam and was the runner-up in the 2003 Grand Slam, where he lost to Andy Roddick at the US Open.

He retired after he suffered injuries that impeded his career.

4. Arantxa Sanchez Vicario

Arantxa Vicario is also known as the Barcelona Bumblebee is a retired professional tennis player. She surprised many when she beat Steffi Graf during the finals of the French Open. Steffi was on the lead with a 41-match winning streak in Grand slam.

Vicario went ahead to win two more French Open singles titles in the duration of her career and a US Open title.

In the double’s category, Vicario was said to be the leading player and won six majors in the women’s double and four majors in the mixed category.

Her career as a professional tennis player was shadowed by the likes of Steffi Graff and Monica Seles who were untouchable in women’s tennis.

It, however, did not block her success in the sport; Vicario won several grand slam titles and fans loved her for being a tenacious game. Being smaller compared to her bigger and seemingly stronger opponents, she proved to be equal on the court.

5. Manuel Santana

Manuel Santana is a retired professional tennis player. He was a champion in the 1960s and seemed to dislike the grass court in Wimbledon compared to his home clay court.

He preferred hard surfaces for tennis as opposed to the soft grass-court he believed were meant for lawn tennis.

Manuel was born in 1938 and was the world number 1 amateur in 1966 by Lance Tingay.

He surprised many when he won at the All-England Club, he also won the French Open singles title twice and the US open once in the 1960s, he was the leading player of the decade during the pre-Open era.

His win at the French Championships put him at the top, being the first Spanish player to win in one of the four major events. He beat the two-time defending champion Nicola Pietrangeli.

He is celebrated as one of the players with impressive hand-eye coordination, a skill he learned while he served as a ball boy at the Madrid Country Club.