Rafael Nadal’s stay at Wimbledon was short-lived this year. He was outplayed and out-served by the tall, dread-locked German qualifier Dustin Brown 7-5, 3-6, 6-4, 6-4 in the second round on Thursday.
This is the not the first time that the former World No 1 has been booted out of the tournament this early -- in 2012, he lost to No. 100 Lukas Rosol in the second round.
The following year, he lost to World no 135 Steve Darcis in the first round and last year, No. 144 Australian Nick Kyrgios knocked him out in the fourth round.
He also suffered a rare loss on clay to Robin Soderling in 2009.
But these losses can’t be counted as records, they are mere one-offs.
Nadal, is known to have a superior win-loss record over most top players (including Andy Murray and Novak Djokovic), but believe it or not, there are players on the circuit who have an edge over Nadal.
Brown is certainly one of them. The German had previously beaten Nadal 6-4, 6-1 in their opening round match in Halle last year.
Nikolay Davydenko would be counted amongst Nadal’s biggest ‘nemesis’. He has tasted the most success against the Spaniard, that too in recent years.
Playing 11 matches, Davydenko has a 6:5 win record.
Of those, Davydenko beat Nadal in three finals, including a drubbing in Miami in 2008 and in 2010 in Doha, where he saved two match points.
The other player with positive head-to-head record against Nadal is the Slovakian Dominik Hrbaty. He leads Nadal 3-1.
He had beaten the Spaniard long before he became World No 1.
But Hrbaty’s most important win came back in 2004, when he beat Nadal to clinch the Heineken Open at the ASB Bank Stadium in Auckland.
"Against Rafa, I played really fast. He was always on the defence. I made lot of pressure on him, he was running a lot. I like the game of the Spanish guys always, especially on the hard court. They could not hurt me that much,” Hrbaty had said of Nadal in an interview in 2009.
Alex Corretja is the other player to have a 100% record over his countryman having played more than one match against him and he leads 2-0.
Correjta had beaten his compatriot at the Madrid Masters back in 2003. That was 6-2, 3-6, 6-4 drubbing in the first round.
The first time that Corretja had taken down the then 17-year-old Nadal was at the Barcelona Open on clay.
