Who Is the Number 1 Tennis Player in the World?
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The answer to this burning question is finally revealed!
Novak Djokovic
Djokovic has been ranked as the No. 1 tennis player in the world by the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) for the sixth time. He first became the World No. 1 on 4 July 2011. Djokovic has held the ranking for a total of 223 weeks. As of 28 September 2020, he has a men’s record of 17 Grand Slam singles titles, five ATP Tour Finals titles, 35 ATP Tour Masters 1000 titles, and 14 ATP Tour 500 titles.
Early life and background
Novak Djokovic was born on May 22, 1987, in Belgrade, Serbia. He comes from a family of Athletes- his father was a professional skier while his mother was a competitive swimmer. At the age of four, Djokovic started playing tennis. When he was six, he was enrolled in the tennis academy of Jelena Genčić. By the age of eight, Djokovic had started training with former Yugoslavian star Boris Becker. In 1996, Djokovic became a member of the Tennis Club Union IBar and started playing for Serbia in various junior tournaments.
In 2003, Djokovic made his Davis Cup debut for Serbia against the Slovak Republic in Bratislava. He helped Serbia win its first Davis Cup title that year. The following year, Djokovic turned professional and entered several Futures and Challenger tournaments. He also made his Grand Slam debut at the 2004 French Open but lost in the first round to Mario Ančić.
Djokovic’s breakthrough year came in 2006 when he won three ATP titles and reached the fourth round of the US Open- his best performance at a Grand Slam tournament till then. He also helped Serbia win its second Davis Cup title that year.
Professional career
In 2007, Djokovic won three Masters Series tournaments and was the runner-up at the year-ending Tennis Masters Cup—this was enough to secure for him the ATP’s rank of world No. 3 at the end of the season, making him the youngest player (at 20 years old) to finish in the Top 3 since Mats Wilander did it in 1983.
The following year, Djokovic won his first major title at the 2008 Australian Open after defeating Jo-Wilfried Tsonga in the final in straight sets. In doing so, he became the first player represent Serbia to win a Grand Slam singles tournament. This victory made him only the third man born in the 1990s to win a major title (after Rafael Nadal and Andy Murray), as well as only the second unseeded man to lift the trophy since Goran Ivanišević did it at 2001 Wimbledon Championships. He also became Serbia’s first world No. 1 ranked tennis player on 6 July 2011.
Major achievements
Djokovic has won numerous awards, including the Laureus World Sportsman of the Year, BBC Overseas Sports Personality of the Year, and the Men’s Tennis Association (MTA) Player of the Year. He has also been voted by his peers as ATP Player of the Year a record six times (in 2011, 2012, 2014, 2015, 2019 and 2020) and voted ATP Most Improved Player of the Year in 2006. In 2012, he was awarded with the Order of St. Sava by the Serbian Orthodox Church.
Rafael Nadal
Rafael Nadal is a Spanish tennis player who is currently ranked number 1 in the world by the Association of Tennis Professionals. He has won 19 Grand Slam singles titles, the second most in history for a male player, as well as 35 ATP Tour Masters 1000 titles, 20 ATP Tour 500 titles, and 3 ATP Finals. Nadal has also won 2 Olympic gold medals in singles tennis.
Early life and background
Rafael Nadal Parera was born in Manacor, Mallorca, Spain, to Sebastián Nadal, a businessman who owns an insurance company, a glass and window company Vidres Mallorca, and manages his own restaurant, Sa Punta. Nadal’s mother is Ana María Parera. He has a younger sister named María Isabel. His uncle Toni Nadal coached him from age four to age fourteen.
Professional career
Rafael Nadal has been ranked world No. 1 by the ATP on 19 separate occasions, a record for a male tennis player. He has also been world No. 1 in the ATP men’s doubles rankings on 10 occasions.
Nadal first became world number one in the ATP rankings on 18 August 2008, when he surpassed Roger Federer. That year he also became the first Spaniard to achieve this ranking since Carlos Moyá in April 1997 and only the second Spaniard in history, after Manuel Santana. He would hold this position until 6 July 2009, when Federer regained the top spot; Nadal reclaimed it on 7 June 2010. Nadal subsequently set several new longevity records: he became the first player to spend 200 weeks at number one, and is currently in his 157th consecutive week as number one (both records as of February 2021). He also became the longest-standing number one ranked player from outside North America, surpassing Ivan Lendl’s previous record of 270 weeks on 4 April 2019; his total of 386 weeks as of February 2021 is over 200 more than any other non-American player, man or woman (Lendl’s second-place tally is 154 weeks).
Major achievements
Rafael Nadal has achieved numerous successes throughout his career thus far. He has won twenty Grand Slam singles titles, which is the second most of all time, only behind Roger Federer. He has also won an Olympic gold medal in singles tennis. He is the only player to have won a Grand Slam event on all three of the main tennis surfaces: hard court, clay court, and grass court. Rafael Nadal has been ranked as the number one tennis player in the world several times throughout his career.
Roger Federer
Roger Federer (born 8 August 1981) is a Swiss professional tennis player who is currently ranked world No. 3 in men’s singles tennis by the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP). He has won 19 Grand Slam singles titles, the most in history for a male tennis player. Federer has held the world No. 1 spot in the ATP rankings for a record 310 weeks, and has finished as the year-end No. 1 six times.
Early life and background
Roger Federer was born on August 8, 1981, in Basel, Switzerland, the son of Swiss national team volleyball player LynetteFederer, and Austrian-South African businessman Robert Federer. He has one sister, Diana, who is two years younger than him. His father is a Swiss-German with Huguenot roots while his mother is South African; both emigrated to Switzerland in the 1970s.
Federer was raised as a Roman Catholic and met Pope Benedict XVI while playing the 2006 Internazionali BNL d’Italia tournament in Rome. He grew up supporting FC Basel. Like all Swiss men over the age of 14, Federer was subject to compulsory military service in the Swiss Armed Forces. However, in 2003 he was deemed unfit for service because he had a congenital back problem and was subsequently not required to fulfill his military obligation. Instead, he served as a ball boy for Basel’s home matches.
Professional career
Federer’s professional career began in 1998. He won his first top-level singles title that year at the Momentum Health Open in Topsail Beach, North Carolina, United States. His first appearance in a Grand Slam tournament came shortly thereafter at Wimbledon in 1999, where he defeated patent attorney Lorenzo Manta in the first round before losing to Grass court specialist and world No. 16 Stefan Koubek in the second round. Aged just 18, Federer defeated defending champion and then-world No. 7 Michael Stich in the second round of Wimbledon and also recorded his first ATP win over a current world No. 1 by defeating Petr Sampras in the fourth round, before losing to Courier again in the quarterfinals.
Major achievements
Roger Federer (born 8 August 1981) is a Swiss tennis player who is currently ranked world No. 3 in men’s singles tennis by the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP). He has won 20 Grand Slam singles titles—the most in history for a male player—and has held the world No. 1 spot in the ATP rankings for 302 weeks, including 237 consecutive weeks. After turning professional in 1998, he was continuously ranked in the top ten from October 2002 to November 2016. He re-entered the top ten following his victory at the 2017 Australian Open. Despite several more years at or near the pinnacle of tennis, he has failed to add to his major tally since winning Wimbledon in 2007, meaning that his grand slam title drought extends into a record-equalling eleventh year. Several publications including Time, Newsweek and ESPN have called him the greatest tennis player of all time.
