The Online Photographer

Rafael Nadal, of Mallorca, Spain, has announced that he will end his career after playing for Spain in the Davis Cup later this year.

Andy Roddick on "Served" puts Rafa's career in context: when Rafa arrived on tour, the all-time leader in major titles was Pete Sampras with 14. Rafa ends his career having won 14 titles at just one major, the French Open (also called Roland-Garros), the only major played on clay. Nadal is indisputably the greatest clay-court player in history, and by an overwhelming margin. He is 544–69 lifetime on clay. But if you take away all of Rafa's French Open titles—subtract all 14 of them—he would still have more major titles than Andy Murray, Arthur Ashe, Guillermo Vilas, Boris Becker, Stefan Edberg, Don Budge, John McEnroe, John Newcombe, and René Lacoste, and as many as Andre Agassi, Ivan Lendl, Jimmy Connors, Ken Rosewall, and Fred Perry. And he did all this while having to contend against the other two of the Big Three.

It's impossible to say for sure, but if he had played his whole career healthy (he was plagued by injuries for years, and kept coming back when the consensus was that he wouldn't or couldn't), he would almost certainly have been the all-time leader in major titles.

No man in tennis has won a Grand Slam since Rod Laver* in 1969. However, Rafa Nadal is one of only eight men and 10 women to have won all four major titles over the course of their careers, and one of only four men in the Open Era to have won the "Channel Slam" or "Channel Double," meaning the French Open and Wimbledon in the same year (it's particularly hard because both tournaments are grueling, and they're scheduled close together, and the farther you go in the French, the less time you have to recover before switching to grass for Wimbledon).

Nadal is also by all accounts a genuinely fine human being, steady, good-tempered, modest, and considerate. He has had no enemies on tour. Nobody has ever seen him break a racquet.

This is a very minor thing, but I love this little video of Nadal being stopped and asked for his I.D. at the Australian Open, which is like Abraham Lincoln getting carded at the door of his White House. Watch the video closely. A slender girl in tennis togs start to jog to get his attention; a guy does a forehead slap after Security lets Rafa through; then, at the end, somebody passing in the hallway drops something and Rafa immediately picks it up and gives it back to him.

The camera then pans to an enormous portrait of Nadal on the wall of the facility. There's your photo I.D., bro!

Mike
Inset: Rafael Nadal announcing his retirement on Instagram

*Rod Laver should have a giant asterisk next to his major total of 11, because he wasn't eligible for the amateur majors during the prime of his career, having turned professional before the start of the Open Era. Laver won the Grand Slam—the true Grand Slam, all four majors in one calendar year, a meaning that tennis has tried hard to banish—in his last year as an amateur, 1962, and in 1969, the second year of the Open Era.

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Featured Comments from:

Jeff1000: "This may be a short and sweet column on the great champion Nadal, but I’m struck by all the research and fact checking that went into it. I’m a long time tennis fan and ex-player—beginning when I watched Laver play Rosewall on TV around 1971—so I appreciate the accuracy of your column. Thanks!"

Mike replies: Thanks Jeff—I saw Jimmy Connors play Ken Rosewall on TV in 1974, so I was just a few years behind you!