Rafael Nadal won 21 Grand Slam titles in singles.
Rafael Nadal got to 21 first, breaking the men’s record for most Grand Slam singles titles and doing it the hard way by coming back from two sets down to beat Daniil Medvedev in an almost 5 1/2-hour Australian Open final that didn’t finish until the early hours of Monday morning.
He was broken when serving for the championship at 5-4 in the fifth set but made no mistake the next time. At 5 hours and 24 minutes, it was the second-longest Australian Open final after Novak Djokovic beat him in five sets in 5 hours and 53 minutes in 2012.
The 35-year-old Spaniard now has one more than Roger Federer and Djokovic, his long-time rivals in the so-called Big Three.
Speaking of the Big Three, Roger Federer and Novak Djokovic congratulated him on the achievement through Instagram and Twitter respectively.
He won the thrilling final in Melbourne 2-6, 6-7 (5), 6-4, 6-4, 7-5. Earlier, Medvedev broke in the fifth and seventh games to take the opening set in 42 minutes.
The duo then exchanged two breaks each before the second set went to a tiebreak, where Medvedev prevailed in a gripping set lasting 84 minutes. The set was marred when a protester holding a banner highlighting refugee detention jumped onto the court mid-game when he was serving for the set at 5-3 before being quickly dragged away by security officials. Then he fought back and won the third set as he broke the Russian second seed in the ninth game as the crowd roared him on.
In the fourth set, He kept his hopes alive by grinding down an increasingly agitated Medvedev, breaking two times to the Russian's one. In the dramatic final set, He broke Medvedev's serve in the fifth game.
However, broke back immediately to clinch victory and become the first-ever man in the history of tennis to win 21 Grand Slam titles. Roaring back from two sets down to claim a record 21st Grand Slam title. In the history of tennis, 151 players won Grand Slam tournaments. Among them, 66 were champions just once, 29 did it 5 or more times and just 8 got 10 or more titles.
Note: The French Open became an international event in 1925 and only from that year it's considered a Grand Slam tournament.
List of career achievements by Rafael Nadal.
He has won a record 21 Grand Slam singles titles which put him above Federer and Novak, making him have the record for most men's singles Grand Slam Titles. He has also won 36 Masters 1000 titles.
He has appeared in the 29 Grand Slam finals which is third to Federer's and Djokovic's 31 finals. Nadal completed the Career Grand Slam and the Career Golden Slam, becoming the youngest player in the Open Era to achieve this feat, having won all four majors and the Olympic title by the age of 24 years, 3 months and 10 days.
Known as the “King of Clay", He won the French Open 9 times in his first 10 attempts, and 13 times overall, which is viewed by many analysts as one of the greatest feats in the Open Era. He won the French Open on his first attempt as a 19-year-old in 2005 and went on to win 4 consecutive crowns from 2005 to 2008, defeating then-world No. 1, Roger Federer, in three consecutive finals from 2006 to 2008 and again in 2011 final at the same manner. He is the only player to defeat Federer in the four finals. His sole loss at the French Open during this period came at the hands of Sweden's Robin Soderling in 2009 in the round of 16. Nadal then went on to avenge his loss to Soderling by defeating him in the 2010 French Open final. He would go on to win 5 consecutive crowns from 2010 to 2014. Rafa furthered his legend in history when he won "La Decima", the 10th title in Paris in 2017, where he didn't drop a set and lost only 35 games, only three shies of Borg's record of 32 games lost. He would then win another 4 consecutive crowns from 2017 to 2020, making Nadal the only player in history, male or female, to win 13 grand slams at a single major. Additionally, his French Open 2020 win also made him the only player in history to have 3 streaks of 4 consecutive titles at a grand slam event, as well as 3 streaks of 30+ consecutive match wins at the same event.
He has never been taken to five sets in the final and is the only player to achieve this type of dominance at any single Grand Slam tournament. Additionally, Nadal is 25–0 in best of 5 matches on clay at other events, bringing his total match record in best of 5 on clay to 130–3, a win percentage of 97.7%.
Nadal did not lose a single semifinal on clay courts for 12 year's from the 2003 Croatia Open to the 2015 Rio Open.
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