{"id":634858,"date":"2026-04-28T20:28:09","date_gmt":"2026-04-28T20:28:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/634858\/"},"modified":"2026-04-28T20:28:09","modified_gmt":"2026-04-28T20:28:09","slug":"rafael-jodars-tennis-rise-and-the-teenage-kicks-of-a-new-template-for-spain-in-the-sport","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/634858\/","title":{"rendered":"Rafael J\u00f3dar\u2019s tennis rise and the teenage kicks of a new template for Spain in the sport"},"content":{"rendered":"

MADRID \u2014 On Sunday night at the Caja M\u00e1gica tennis complex, there were so many moments when Rafael J\u00f3dar<\/a> could have patted himself on the back for an job well done and called it a tournament at the Madrid Open<\/a>.<\/p>\n

He was down two break points in his first service game against Jo\u00e3o Fonseca<\/a> of Brazil, who has deservedly occupied the hot-young-thing chair in men\u2019s tennis<\/a> for over a year. Instead, J\u00f3dar won that game, and then the first set \u2014 in a tiebreak. But in the second, Fonseca started to sprint away from him, taking over this battle of two 19-year-olds who may have a lot to say about the direction of the sport in the coming years.<\/p>\n

J\u00f3dar kept hammering. Fonseca went up 40-15 on his own serve at 0-1 in the third set, but made a few careless errors to lose five points in a row and hand J\u00f3dar a break for 2-0. The Brazilian smashed his racket. It was basically over, but J\u00f3dar was not finished, blasting his way to another break and then the match in front of his hometown fans, who exploded for him from the moment he walked onto the court in the Manolo Santana Stadium.<\/p>\n

Along the way, J\u00f3dar showed the tennis world that the old archetype of the Spanish men\u2019s tennis player, the grinder who turns his opponents\u2019 legs to goo over the course of an endless afternoon, may be dead and gone forever.<\/p>\n

Rafael Nadal, the king of clay<\/a>, started digging that stereotype\u2019s grave with his evolutions to the sport. Carlos Alcaraz<\/a> has been reading its last rites for the better part of the last five years. Jaume Munar, who entered 2025 transformed into a more aggressive, front-foot player, did his part to prepare the wake.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s J\u00f3dar who appears on the verge of driving a stake through it.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are a bit blinded by the fact that the way Rafa played is the only way you can play on clay, but it\u2019s not,\u201d said Casper Ruud, a two-time French Open finalist, referring to his hero, the 14-time champion at Roland Garros.<\/p>\n

Ruud, and everyone else in men\u2019s tennis, has had an eye on J\u00f3dar of late. He\u2019s been hard to miss. He raised some eyebrows when beat Learner Tien, who spent last season flying up the rankings, in his first match at last year\u2019s Next Gen ATP Finals, the end-of-season tournament for players under 20.<\/p>\n

J\u00f3dar was still enrolled as the star of University of Virginia\u2019s college tennis<\/a> program, but he had won three ATP Challenger Tour events \u2014 the rung below the main tour \u2014 during the season. That was enough to qualify him for the Next Gen event, and just before the start of 2026, he announced that he was hitting the pro tour full-time.<\/p>\n

He hasn\u2019t looked back since. He qualified for the Australian Open and then won his first Grand Slam main-draw match, in five sets. He won two main-draw matches at the Miami Open, before picking up his first full ATP Tour title in Marrakech, Morocco in early April. Back on home clay, he\u2019s plowed his way into the fourth round of a Masters 1000 for the first time with three consecutive wins, including a second-round defeat of Alex de Minaur, the world No. 8.<\/p>\n

On Tuesday, he picked up where he left off, beating V\u00edt Kop\u0159va of the Czech Republic 7-5, 6-0 to earn a quarterfinal showdown with Jannik Sinner, the world No. 1, who is riding a 20-match winning streak.<\/p>\n

Sinner watched Jodar play live last week and said he stayed up to the end of his win over Fonseca, watching him on television.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not going to be the only time we face each other, that\u2019s my feeling,\u201d Sinner said during a news conference Tuesday after beating Cameron Norrie. \u201cVery exciting. New player. Big, big talent.\u201d<\/p>\n

J\u00f3dar has lifted the tournament in a way only a local could. As he began his walk-on Sunday night for the Fonseca match, the public address announcer gave him the full Nadal treatment, stretching out the final sounds of \u201cRafael\u201d and letting the packed crowd on Court Manolo Santana take it from there. There is nothing quite like a teenager named Rafa sprinting across red clay to make the hearts of fans in the Spanish capital go pitter-patter and dream of future glory.<\/p>\n

And yet, to get caught up in what J\u00f3dar might one day be would risk missing the show that this unseasoned version of him is putting on. With the first match on the schedule Sunday night stretching to three sets and nearly two and a half hours, the Spaniards had to wait until close to 11 p.m. Sunday night for J\u00f3dar and Fonseca to get under way.<\/p>\n

That is less of a big deal in Madrid than elsewhere. This is the land of the midnight supper. The hometown faithful waited, and the overwhelming majority of them were there for the end of the 7-6(4), 4-6, 6-1 win just before 1 a.m.<\/p>\n

Across more than two hours, Fonseca and J\u00f3dar delivered something far from the sort of red-clay chess match seasoned fans might have expected from a Brazilian and a Spaniard. Instead, they got a teenage flurry of winners, mistakes, tactical naivety, shouts and sulks: a battle between two players looking for the first chance to whack the ball past the other guy, largely because they haven\u2019t yet developed the tools to stop that happening on a regular basis.<\/p>\n

They took turns rushing each other\u2019s second serves, jumping into the returns and trying to stuff the ball into the corner. J\u00f3dar was even more dynamic than his opponent, lunging and throwing his body into every backhand return he could. His groundstrokes rip through the court, but the power all comes from timing and the kinetic chain, rather than muscling or heaving the ball.<\/p>\n

\"Rafael<\/p>\n

\n Rafael J\u00f3dar is surging up the men\u2019s tennis rankings. (Miguel Reis \/ NurPhoto via Associated Press)<\/p>\n

Then came the highlights, which linger longer in the memory than the out-of-position misses and slaps. Why hit a defensive lob from six feet behind the baseline, when it\u2019s possible to swat a running forehand to the postage stamp that will get a roar from the crowd?<\/p>\n

J\u00f3dar is so raw and plays so fast that he is occasionally readying himself to blast a serve while the ball kids are still rolling the balls to one another or running back into position. Against Fonseca, the chair umpire had to ask him to wait. He flung his arms and jawed with anyone who would listen.<\/p>\n

The Brazilian, who is known for having one of the biggest forehands in the game, was the more experienced player Sunday night, a new situation that he said afterward made him nervous. He averaged 78 mph on his forehand, down slightly from his average of 81 mph, despite unleashing the occasional bomb that flew through the court. His spin rate on the shot averaged just under 2,800 revolutions per minute.<\/p>\n

Usually, he\u2019s just above 3,000. He mixed in more slices and offspeed balls than he might do usually, trying to inhabit the role of the more experienced player.<\/p>\n

That was well behind J\u00f3dar, whose forehand averaged 85 mph and nearly 3,200 RPMs.<\/p>\n

\u201cVery tough,\u201d J\u00f3dar said when it was over. \u201cThese matches are decided by very small details and very small points. I think I did a great job in those points, trying to play my game.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to Brian Rasmussen, the assistant coach for the men\u2019s team at Virginia, doing things his own way has been central to J\u00f3dar\u2019s success. It\u2019s a trait that Rasmussen believes he inherited from his father, also Rafael, a women\u2019s basketball coach, physiotherapist and now a largely self-taught tennis coach, who has guided his son to the edge of the top 40. A year ago, he was world No. 687.<\/p>\n

So far, the elder J\u00f3dar appears to be playing against type as well. While his son battled against Fonseca Sunday night, his father sat stoic and alone \u2014 no hometown entourage in sight \u2014 in the courtside players\u2019 box. Even when the match tightened, he was mostly still and silent.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe wants Rafa to have adversity,\u201d Rasmussen said. \u201cHe wants his son to work through these things.\u201d<\/p>\n

J\u00f3dar didn\u2019t enter the sport trying to copy the Spanish archetype. He can chase balls down and defend in the corners, but his default setting is to crowd the baseline, using first-strike aggression that can take his opponent\u2019s racket out of their hand.<\/p>\n

\u201cRafa is so humble he is going to grab things from every player, said Rasmussen, who accompanied J\u00f3dar to Australia in January. \u201cAnything I ever asked him to do in practice, he would do that and he does it full intensity. He\u2019s super humble and super hungry.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rasmussen and Andres Pedroso, the head coach of UVA, came to know J\u00f3dar about a year before his breakout win at the U.S. Open junior tournament in 2024. J\u00f3dar was outside the top 100 in the world junior rankings then. But they liked his work ethic and the way he got along with the team on his recruiting visit. UVA announced his recruitment on social media in November 2023, next to another young player: Fonseca.<\/p>\n

He did a training block at Virginia in the summer of 2024, did well at an event in Maryland, then went to New York and won the junior title. At that point, plenty of juniors would have decided to skip a stint in college. Fonseca did, and never played for UVA. J\u00f3dar didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

He joined the team in January of 2025, went 19-3, became an All-American and was voted Rookie of the Year for all sports. He also made the Atlantic Coast Conference\u2019s academic honor roll and was named one of the Intercollegiate Tennis Association\u2019s scholar athletes.<\/p>\n

Once he started to pile up wins on the ATP Challenger Tour, it was time to move on.<\/p>\n

\u201cPlaying against lots of players of a high level, I believe, is letting me improve my own level,\u201d he said in Spanish after pummeling de Minaur, 6-3, 6-1 on Friday. \u201cWhen you play against this type of player, the best players in the world, you are really going to increase your level.\u201d<\/p>\n

On Wednesday he will face Sinner, and the highest level there. He knows it will be unlike anything he has faced before.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can see that in every match he plays he\u2019s always very focused with the mentality,\u201d J\u00f3dar said of Sinner. \u201cObviously he\u2019s got a great forehand, backhand. Overall I think he\u2019s a great player, so if I want to do well tomorrow I\u2019ll have to give my best.\u201d<\/p>\n

All the new Rafa fans should be out in force. They may be surprised by what they see.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MADRID \u2014 On Sunday night at the Caja M\u00e1gica tennis complex, there were so many moments when Rafael…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":634859,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[442],"tags":[49,48,82,593],"class_list":["post-634858","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-sports","tag-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/634858","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=634858"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/634858\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/634859"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=634858"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=634858"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=634858"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}