Editor’s note: This story was translated from ATPTour.com/es
Twenty-five seasons have gone by since Feliciano Lopez took to the clay of the Real Club de Tenis Barcelona-1899 to play in the Barcelona Open Banc Sabadell for the first time. It was April 1998, and the Spaniard was a promising young 16-year-old who had been given a wild card for the qualifiers. After winning two matches, he played the first of the 991 main-draw tour-level matches he has competed in so far during his distinguished career.
It was a brief first encounter with ATP Tour tennis, because Jiri Novak sent him packing in the first round, 6-0, 6-2. “I came back down to earth with a bang,” Lopez told ATPTour.com this week in Barcelona. “He thrashed me, and I told myself: ‘Time to practise, there is still a long way to go’. I would have signed on the dotted line for everything that has happened to me since that match.”
That teenager could never have imagined the records he would go on to set: playing more consecutive Grand Slam main draws than any other player, participating in more ATP Masters 1000s than anyone else, and being a member of the 500-wins club.
Even though his breakthrough came on clay, the young Lopez was different to his compatriots. He didn’t fit the mould of a classic Spanish player. His qualities were different, try as they might to make him like the rest. He was a rebel, a left-hander with an exceptional serve and an innate gift for volleying.
“In my day Spaniards didn’t go to Wimbledon, it was said that grass was for cows,” he remembers with a chuckle. “I wasn’t told, based on my physique and my style of play, that I had to focus on fast courts. I was another product of the system of that era, a prototype Spanish player on clay.”
His time as a junior, as was the norm, was spent at satellite tournaments (such as those on the ATP Challenger Tour) in Spain, while he also enjoyed junior experiences at Roland Garros and the Orange Bowl. “As I grew up, I started to feel that I wasn’t really that style of player,” said Lopez.
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Still a teenager, he set off with his father to play in his first Wimbledon qualifiers. “I think I won a match, although it wasn’t a great experience for me,” he said. He would have to wait until 2002 for his first magic moment on the green lawns.
Ranked No. 103 in the Pepperstone ATP Rankings, Lopez earned himself a place in the main draw at 2002 Wimbledon. On his first appearance at the grass-court Grand Slam, he reached the fourth round.
“I played a match in the last sixteen against Andre Sa, who wasn’t a grass specialist, but I was 20 years old, and I couldn’t play because I was so nervous,” said Lopez. “I kept thinking that I was in the last sixteen, against an opponent I could beat if I played well and then I would face [Tim] Henman, the home favourite, on centre court at Wimbledon. The situation was too much for me. That’s when I realised grass was a surface I could play well on.
“On grass, I feel comfortable after five minutes, the ball bounces low, which I like, my serve works… But I had never experienced it as a kid because we didn’t play on it,” he continues. “It was unexpected, but I realised straight away. That’s how it was. When I played in the quarters in 2005, no Spaniard had gone that far since Manuel Orantes. It didn’t take long for me to fall in love with it.”
Such was his prowess on the surface that he produced a huge upset on it late in his career. In 2019, he won the Cinch Championships in both singles and doubles (with Andy Murray) at The Queen’s Club.
“If anyone had told me at 16 years of age that I’d be playing tennis at 37 I would have said they were crazy,” he admits. “Now I think about it, and it seems impossible. Sometimes we’re really not aware of the things that happen to us. When you analyse all of this, winning the singles and doubles at Queen’s, you think; I have been so lucky in life.”
It is this luck, of a privileged physique and a unique style, that allowed him to bust a Spanish myth; that grass is only for cows.