Rafael Jodar joined the list of title-winning Spanish teenagers with his victory at the Grand Prix Hassan II in Morocco on Sunday and the \u200b19-year-old said having the right mentality was the key to success \u200cin his first Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) tournament on clay.<\/p>\n
Jodar’s 6-3 6-2 win over Marco Trungelliti put him into an elite group of Spaniards who captured ATP titles as teenagers in the \u200bprofessional era, including Rafa Nadal, Carlos Alcaraz, Carlos Moya, Juan Carlos Ferrero \u200band Tommy Robredo.<\/p>\n
Ranked outside the top 900 a year ago, Jodar \u2060climbed to a career-high world number 57 on Monday.<\/p>\n
“It was the first \u200btournament on clay for me so it was going to be difficult at \u200bthe beginning, but I always have the mentality that I have to give my best tennis and what I have in that match,” Jodar told the ATP website.<\/p>\n
“That’s what I \u200bdid in all the matches, so it means a lot to win my \u200bfirst ATP title in Marrakech.”<\/p>\n
Jodar said he was trying to follow in the footsteps of \u200chis \u2060idol, 22-times Grand Slam champion Nadal, but he did not set himself targets for the year.
\n“I never set a goal in the season. Just to try to give my best and improve my tennis level,” he added.<\/p>\n
“But overall, I \u200bthink I did a \u200bgreat week on \u2060clay here in Morocco, so I’m very happy how the week went for me and I will try to \u200bmake sure this is just the beginning. It has to \u200bgive me \u2060motivation for the next challenges.”<\/p>\n
Argentina’s Trungelliti was left impressed by Jodar after a 69-minute mauling.<\/p>\n
“Today, I guess I got kicked by this young man,” said the 36-year-old, the \u2060oldest \u200bfirst-time tour-level finalist in the professional era.<\/p>\n
“It was \u200bsad for me because I was expecting a great final, but at least you saw a great \u200bfinal from one side.”<\/p>\n
–Reuters–<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":16418,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false},"news-type":[20],"class_list":["post-30924","news","type-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","news-type-sport","entry"],"acf":{"short_description":"Ranked outside the top 900 a year ago, Jodar \u2060climbed to a career-high world number 57 on Monday.","published_date":"","news_description":"Ranked outside the top 900 a year ago, Jodar \u2060climbed to a career-high world number 57 on Monday.","form_embed":"","author":"","image_caption":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/30924","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/30924\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30925,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/30924\/revisions\/30925"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16418"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30924"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"news-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-type?post=30924"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}