The Players Of The Decade
© Getty ImagesRoger Federer's perseverance paid off as he won Roland Garros on his 11th attempt to complete the career Grand Slam.
Take a look back at the best five players and best doubles team of the past decade. Performances between the years of 2000 to 2009 only have been considered.
Roger Federer, possibly the greatest player ever to grace the game, has dominated men’s tennis since the turn of the millennium, winning a record-breaking 15 Grand Slam titles. In July 2003, at the age of 21, the Swiss delivered on his early promise by capturing his first major crown at Wimbledon. What followed in the next six years has been truly remarkable.
The Basel native went on to win a further five Wimbledon titles, including five successive victories between 2003-07.
Since 2004, his dominance at The All England Club has only been interrupted by arch rival Rafael Nadal in an epic final in 2008 that was hailed as one of the greatest matches ever. Federer also exerted his dominance at the US Open, where he won the title five times in a row between 2004-08, with his run finally ending against Juan Martin del Potro in a five-set thriller in the 2009 final. He won three Australian Opens in 2004, ’06 and ’07 and completed the set at Roland Garros this year, defeating Robin Soderling to become the sixth man in history to win the career Grand Slam.Federer has been a near constant at the top of the South African Airways ATP Rankings. He first clinched the top spot on 2 February, 2004 and would stay there for a record 237 consecutive weeks before being dethroned by Nadal on 18 August, 2008. The right-hander reclaimed top spot on 6 July, 2009 and at the end of the season was crowned ATP World Tour Champion for the fifth time in six years – becoming only the second player (Ivan Lendl in 1989) to reclaim the year-end South African Airways ATP Ranking after losing it for a year.
2. Rafael Nadal
In recent years, Rafael Nadal has emerged as the strongest challenger to Federer’s dominance and has established one of the most gripping rivalries in the history of men’s tennis with the Swiss. The Spaniard, who proudly displays the silhouette of a bull’s horns on his tennis shoes, has been the undoubted King of Clay in the past five years. Of the Spaniard’s 36 tour-level titles, 25 have come on his surface of choice.
The Mallorcan’s clay-court dominance has been at its zenith at Roland Garros, where he first made his debut in 2005. He won his first 31 matches at the clay-court major, capturing four successive titles, before his run came to and end at the hands of Robin Soderling in the fourth round this year. But it is not only on clay that the left-hander has excelled. He became the first Spaniard since Manuel Santana 1966 to win Wimbledon when he dethroned five-time champion Federer in 2008 and won his first hard-court major at the ‘09 Australian Open, once again defeating Federer.
The Manacor native, who has the following of a rock star, became the first Spaniard in the history of the South African Airways ATP Rankings (since 1973) to finish as ATP World Tour Champion in 2008 and has featured in three of his nation’s four Davis Cup triumphs.
