Rafael Nadal may be best known for dominating Roland Garros, but the 22-time Grand Slam champion is a major threat at all four majors - and he absolutely is One of the biggest threats to Wimbledon this year.
Here are seven reasons why:
He has won Wimbledon twice before. Nadal is one of only four active men's players to win Wimbledon in 2008 and 2010. With eight-time champion Roger Federer still recovering from a layoff with a knee injury, Nadal will be one of only three former champions in this year's men's draw, along with six-time champion Novak Djokovic and two-time champion Andy Murray .
He reached the finals three more times. Nadal finished runner-up in 2006 (Federer), 2007 (Federer) and 2011 (Djokovic) and won two titles, Nadal is actually one of only 13 people in the entire history of the tournament to do so One - since 1877, exactly 145 years ago - has reached five (or more) finals at the All England Club.
He almost entered the finals the last two times he participated in the finals. Nadal reached the semifinals in his last two appearances at Wimbledon in 2018 and 2019, and in both semifinals against Djokovic he was only barely beaten in the first, finishing in fifth He scored 5 break points in the set and finally lost 6-4, 3-6, 7-6(9), 3-6, 10-8, 5 hours and 15 minutes later. Federer easily defeated him in the 2019 semifinals 7-6(3), 1-6, 6-3, 6-4. The match lasted 3 hours and 2 minutes.
Wimbledon was actually the second of the four Grand Slams he won. Nadal's first four Grand Slams were won at Roland Garros in 2005, 2006, 2007 and 2008, and he won his first just weeks after his fourth title in Paris The Wimbledon champion defeated Federer 6-4, 6-4, 6-7(5), 6-7(8), 9-7 in an epic final. The following year, he won his first Australian Open title in 2009 and his first US Open title the following year in 2010.
In addition to the two Wimbledon championships in 2008 and 2010, Nadal also won two ATP grass court championships in the Queen's Cup and Stuttgart in 2008 and 2015 respectively.
He has twice won the double crown at Roland Garros and Wimbledon.. He played one of the toughest doubles in tennis history in 2008 and 2010, when there was only a two-week grass-court season between the two Grand Slams. He is one of only two players in the Open era to win the Roland Garros-Wimbledon double title multiple times, the other being Bjorn Bo who won the double title three consecutive years in 1978, 1979 and 1980. grid ( Bjorn Borg ).
He has a 78% win rate on grass . Over his career, he is 71-20 on grass, or a 78% winning percentage. Only four active men's players have a higher career winning percentage in this regard: Federer (.869), Djokovic (.850), Matteo Berrettini (.846) and Mourinho Thunder (.826).
Finally, Not only is he undefeated at 14-0 in majors in 2022, but he is actually the only one to reach the quarterfinals or better in the first two majors of the year The people . No one has raised their level at the Grand Slams this year like Nadal, as he won the Australian Open and Roland Garros in the same year for the first time in his career.
