The Argentine press is in a swoon over the announcement that David Nalbandian, “King David,” as he is known there, is retiring. \u00a0Nalbandian has undergone several surgeries in the last few years, so it’s not actually a shock, but the popular player with the magnificent backhand and the sharp angles of a physicist will be missed. \u00a0Local press mentioned some of his career highlights:<\/p>\n
Sept. 1988: \u00a0At 16, he won the US Open Juniors title, beating Roger Federer, the reigning Wimbledon Juniors champ: 6-3, 7-5.<\/p>\n
March 2000: \u00a0Made his ATP debut in Key Biscayne. \u00a0Made it through the qualifying rounds, only to fall to Jim Courier.<\/p>\n
April 2002: \u00a0Won his first ATP title in Estoril on clay over Nieminen, beating Coria and Moy\u00e0 along the way.<\/p>\n
July 2002: \u00a0After a great fortnight, lost in the Wimbledon final to then-world No. 1, Lleyton Hewitt.<\/p>\n
Sept. 2002: \u00a0Made his Davis Cup debut. \u00a0Nalbandian beat (along with Lucas Arnold) Safin\/Kafelnikov in doubles, and Safin in straights in his singles tie, though Argentina eventually fell to Russia.<\/p>\n
July 2005: \u00a0Again in Davis Cup, Nalbandian beats Hewitt on grass in Australia to give Argentina the win over the Aussies.<\/p>\n
November 2005: \u00a0Wins Shanghai Masters<\/p>\n
March 2006: \u00a0Reaches No. 3 in the world rankings, behind Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal. \u00a0He is the third Argentine to do so, after \u00a0Vilas and Coria.<\/p>\n
December 2006: \u00a0In a losing effort against Russia, Nalbandian beats Davydenko and Safin.<\/p>\n
October 2007: \u00a0A career high. \u00a0At the Paris Masters 1000,\u00a0he beat Federer in the quarterfinals, then Nadal in the final to take the title. \u00a0He was the first player to beat both champions in one tournament. \u00a0And two weeks later, he won the Madrid Masters by beating Nadal in the quarterfinal, Djokovic in the semifinal, and Federer in the final.<\/p>\n
August 2010: \u00a0Wins his last professional title in Washington, over Marcos Baghdatis, 6-2, 7-6.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Argentine press is in a swoon over the announcement that David Nalbandian, “King David,” as he is known there, is retiring. \u00a0Nalbandian has undergone several surgeries in the last few years, so it’s not actually a shock, but the popular player with the magnificent backhand and the sharp angles of a physicist will be […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":4487,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[403],"class_list":["post-4481","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-atp-tennis","tag-david-nalbandian"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisfrontier.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4481","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisfrontier.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisfrontier.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisfrontier.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisfrontier.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4481"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisfrontier.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4481\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisfrontier.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4487"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisfrontier.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4481"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisfrontier.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4481"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisfrontier.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4481"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}