Contrary to spurious online rumours, Jodar is not named in homage to Nadal.<\/p>\n
He shares the name with the 22-time major winner through family tradition, with his father and grandfather also called Rafael.<\/p>\n
But there does seem to be a sense of nominative determination for the youngest Jodar, who – like every aspiring Spanish player – idolises Nadal.<\/p>\n
Jodar’s path was carved at his local club in the upmarket Madrid suburb of Chamartin before he demonstrated his global potential by winning the 2024 US Open boys’ title.<\/p>\n
Days later, he was called up to be a hitting partner with the Spanish Davis Cup team in Valencia and instantly impressed the nation’s stars.<\/p>\n
“He was a skinny kid, obviously, but you could already see he played very well, even on an indoor court,” said two-time US Open semi-finalist Pablo Carreno Busta, who was Jodar\u2019s latest victim in their fourth-round match on Sunday.<\/p>\n
“With those levers, the big hitting, hogging the baseline, he was already showing real promise.”<\/p>\n
Still, his rise from a freshman at the University of Virginia to a Grand Slam quarter-finalist has been meteoric.<\/p>\n
Jodar enrolled in the United States college system in 2025 to gain valuable experience – like many other professional players – and living away from home also benefitted his development, he says.<\/p>\n
The time in the US has undoubtedly honed the maturity, discipline and competitiveness he shows on court.<\/p>\n
Jodar quickly started combining college time with playing ATP Challenger Tour events, watching last year’s French Open on television – between matches at a little-known second-rung tournament in Texas.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Contrary to spurious online rumours, Jodar is not named in homage to Nadal. He shares the name with…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":709768,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[442],"tags":[49,48,82,593],"class_list":["post-709767","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\/709767","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=709767"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/709767\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/709768"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=709767"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=709767"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=709767"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}