ATP interview

World No. 1 Rafael Nadal believes his chances are slim of winning all four Grand Slam championships in one calendar year.

“I hope to have the chances to win four [major] titles next year,” said Nadal at the Shanghai Rolex Masters on Monday. “[But] for me, that is impossible. I will try to keep playing well… but the Grand Slam is not the case. That's for sure impossible, I think.”

Nadal won his fifth Roland Garros title (d. Soderling) in May, lifted his second Wimbledon trophy (d. Berdych) in July and became the seventh man in tennis history to complete a career Grand Slam by clinching his first US Open crown (d. Djokovic). He became the 2010 ATP World Tour Champion on 16 September.

When asked what the Spaniard attributes his stellar season to, the 24 year old said, “I was able to be almost all the time at my hundred per cent.
“Last year and the beginning of this was difficult and hard for me. So maybe for that reason I was able to push hard in all the tournaments, play with [one] hundred per cent of motivation and try [one] hundred per cent in every moment.

“If you are winning, you want to keep winning because you never know when this going to stop.  So you have to do your best. When you are healthy, you have to enjoy the moments when you can because, for sure, the difficult moments are going to come back.”

Last week he picked up his 43rd tour-level title and seventh trophy of the year at the Rakuten Japan Open Tennis Championships in Tokyo. But if his ATP World Tour rivals think he’ll let up towards the end of the year, they’d be wrong.

“Three tournaments remain for me,” he said. “Last effort, [a] last try to be as good as I can in the last three tournaments of the year.”

Nadal will end his year by competing at the Barclays ATP World Tour Finals at The O2 in London from 21-29 November. Roger Federer and Novak Djokovic have also qualified for the season finale.