Men's Tennis: 5 youngest Grand Slam singles champions
In the modern Era, players tend to peak late and have long tennis careers. This is exemplified by the fact that no man born in the 1990s has yet won a Grand Slam title. In fact, the youngest among all Grand Slam champions in the ATP circuit today is Croat Marin Cilic who is 30 years old.
Longevity can be attributed to a variety of reasons - the most important being increased awareness of training methods, nutrition and tournament scheduling. A case in point is Roger Federer winning the 2018 Australian Open at the age of 36 and Rafael Nadal finishing 2017 as the Number 1 ranked player aged 31.
Players like Kevin Anderson, John Isner, Stanislas Wawrinka have all played their best tennis post 30 and the trend looks to continue with 7 out of the Top-10 players in the ATP rankings aged 30 or over.
The last teenager to win a Grand Slam title in the Men's draw was Rafael Nadal way back in 2005. In the serve and volley era, many players achieved stupendous success as teenagers, winning multiple Grand Slam titles. We take a look at the 5 youngest ever Men's Grand Slam champions:
#5 Rafael Nadal
Spaniard Rafael Nadal is the only active player in the list. Nadal took the tennis world by storm in 2005 when he gave a stiff fight to Aussie Lleyton Hewitt at the 4th round of the Australian Open.
At the 2005 Miami Masters, he pushed top-ranked Roger Federer all the way to 5 sets and was two points away from winning but eventually lost. His sheer brilliance on clay was seen that year when he won the Barcelona Open and beat 2004 French Open runner-up Guillermo Coria at the Monte Carlo Masters winning his first Masters title aged just 18.
He followed this up with another victory over Coria at the final of the Rome Masters the same year making him the dark horse at Roland Garros. Later he beat Roger Federer in the semi-finals and Mariano Puerta in the finals to claim the 2005 French Open title at the age of 19 years and 3 days.
Nadal started the year 49 in the ATP rankings and finished the year as the World Number 2. There has been no looking back as the Spaniard has gone from strength to strength and continues to shatter records even in his 30s