Rafael Nadal is only the fourth man to win major singles titles on three different surfaces, after Jimmy Connnors, Mats Wilander and Andre Agassi. Unlike those people, who did it over a number of years, he's actually the first ever man to win major singles titles on three different surfaces in one year. I shuffled over to wikipedia to check this out and as far as I can tell it's true. No other man has ever done this, not even Rod Laver, because he won his grand slams on two surfaces. Rafa is a phenomenon.
But, not only is he quite good at tennis, here's a man who also finds time to organise his commemorative stuffed wombats into his trophies during high pressure moments.
Oh and while I'm here posting about tennis related geekery, here's a really fascinating breakdown of the 2009 AO final. It uses a system to calculate effectiveness of play called the 'aggressive margin', but added to this is a breakdown of each time Roger and Rafa played a shot in order to force the other into error.
pic from Corbis
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