Spain’s legendary tennis star
Rafael Nadal is set to face
America’s
Darwin Blanch in the
Madrid Open opener on Wednesday. The contest is
going be one of the most historic ones, largely because of an interesting
reason.
According to a tennis statistician JeuSetMaths on the social
media platform X — previously known as Twitter — the match will feature one of
the biggest age gaps between the two participating players in a match of
an ATP contest. The age difference between Nadal and Blanch will be 21 years
and 117 days at the time of the fixture, which will be the fifth-biggest in the
ATP history.
The biggest difference between the players' age in a match
was between Thomas Muster and Dominic Thiem which was 25 years and 337 days. It
will be interesting to see how Nadal will be able to play a player who is much
younger and has been playing consistently. On the other hand, the 37-year-old has
struggled consistently with fitness concerns in the recent past. It was for this reason, he ended up missing the last four Grand Slams, including the
Australian Open 2024. He recently played in the Barcelona Open and was knocked
out after losing in the round of 32 to Australia’s Alex de Minaur in straight
sets with a score of 7-5, 6-1.
