Rafael Nadal And The World of Tennis

He is a Spanish professional tennis player and known as world’s number one. Playing on Clay court is his specialty which has earned him the nickname “The King of Clay”. Furthermore, his evolution into an all-court has established him as one of the greatest players of all time. He is 28 years old at the time of this article being published.

Can you imagine how young he started his career in sports? At that age, what do you think our average young man is doing in Malaysia?

Nadal has won 14 Grand Slam singles titles, the 2008 Olympic gold medal in singles, a record 27 ATP World Tour Masters 1000 and a record 15 ATP World Tour 500 tournaments. In 2004, 2008, 2009, and 2011 He was a member of the winning Spain Davis Cup team. He became the seventh player in history and youngest of four in the Open Era to achieve the Career Grand Slam in 2010.

He is the second male player, after Andre Agassi, to complete the singles Career Golden Slam.

We do have Champions in our country; Chong Wei, Nicol, Chee Wei, Jironi Riduan, Pandalela and others but these people are getting old and it seems that our sports industry is not producing enough successors.

In the popular countries, there are people who get rich just by skateboarding or rollerskating or the more obvious playing Basketball, Baseball, Football, Soccer and whatever.

I sure hope YB Khairy Jamaluddin could pave the way for our sportsman to be as successful as those internationally known men and women. Nevertheless, I respect our champions who had strive for the good name of our beloved country. I hope that one day, we have somebody in Tennis as good as if not better than Rafael Nadal.

Cheers.