David Ferrer
It might be considered bad luck to be the second placed Spaniard in the ATP
tennis ratings, considering the amount of publicity and sponsorship that goes
with being Rafa Nadal. Don’t waste your sympathy on David Ferrer, though – he’s
doing very nicely, thank you. Let’s face it, on bare statistics alone, by the
end of 2007 David Ferrer had won just under 5 million dollars and was rated at
number 5 in the world, so life can’t be too bad, can it?
And he’s such a personable young man – and still only 25, despite the fact that
he seems to have been around for such a long time.
David Ferrer Ern was born in April of 1982 in Jávea, a town of 30,000 people
just north of Alicante, with an accountant father and school teacher mother.
David’s elder brother, Javier, was, at one time, Spanish Under 13 National
champion and became a well-respected coach so David had plenty of help and
encouragement during his early tennis career. He still managed to play a lot of
football and basketball, though until, at the age of 15, he moved to Barcelona
to attend the prestigious Catalan Tennis Federation training school.
After leaving school, David returned to live and train in Jávea and turned
professional in 2000, finishing the year ranked 419 in the world. Since then,
David’s career has progressed steadily and each year his ranking has improved –
71 in 2003, 49 in 2004, 14 in 2005 and then reaching the top ten for a few weeks
in 2006 before fully breaking into it in 2007.
2007, in fact, marked a real breakthrough year in many ways for the always
approachable Spaniard. Having only previously won two ATP ranking tournaments –
in Bucharest in 2002 and Stuttgart in 2006 (ironically defeating José Acasuso in
both of them), in 2007, David won three – Auckland, Bastad and Tokyo. He also
qualified, for the first time, for the end of season Masters Cup in Shanghai,
where he had a perfect record in the ‘round robin’ section of the tournament –
defeating Novak Dokovic, Rafa Nadal and Richard Gasquet and then Andy Roddick in
the semi-final. Unfortunately, David subsequently met a fully functioning Roger
Federer in the final and was defeated in straight sets.
David Ferrer would certainly choose a clay court as his preferred surface but he
has improved dramatically on hard courts during recent years. As you would
expect from someone whose name, literally, means blacksmith in Catalan, his most
valuable asset is his determination and refusal to accept defeat. Couple this
with the apparent ability to run all day and chase down everything and it
becomes clearer why Ferrer keeps climbing the ratings.
It’s understandable perhaps, given the charisma and playing record of Rafael
Nadal, to sometimes forget that Spain has four other men in the world’s top
twenty tennis players – considerably more than anyone else.
And of those four, David Ferrer is getting closer to the top every season.
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