Rafael Jódar’s tennis rise makes him a shooting star with staying power among the brightest

MONTREAL — Men’s tennis is no stranger to shooting stars. They come along every few years, young players who appear suddenly and heat up quickly, before rocketing up the rankings in a wink.

Few are more aware of this phenomenon than three of the four players left standing at the Canadian Open here in Montreal, an ATP Masters 1000 event one rung below the Grand Slams. Top seed and defending champion Ben Shelton, now 23, lived it just three years ago. At age 20, the American went from outside the top 100 in November 2022 to world No. 16 a year later.

Today, his countryman Learner Tien is the world No. 19, also at 20, a modest 213-spot leap from his ranking this time in 2025.

Then there is Rafael Jódar, the 19-year-old from Spain. He is world No. 15. A year ago, he was outside the top 500.

If he wins this Canadian Open, he will become the fastest player to make the top 10 after first breaking the top 100. Boris Becker set the record in 1985 at 210 days. Jódar would do it in 140.

Mix the ATP’s recent history with what an odd year it’s been on the tour — what with Carlos Alcaraz’s five-month layoff due to a wrist injury, a rash of ailments felling other top players and general inconsistency by everyone not named Jannik Sinner — and perhaps it isn’t a surprise that some youngster has made hay of the chaos.

But nothing about Jódar feels ordinary.

He beat 22-year-old Frenchman Arthur Fils, one of the most exhilarating young prospects in the sport, for the second time in as many weeks Tuesday, winning their quarterfinal 7-6(5), 6-3.

That win made him the first man born after 2005 to reach a semifinal at an ATP Masters 1000, and he’s been running through milestones all year. The quarterfinal against Fils was Jódar’s seventh in his past eight tournaments, a streak that dates back to March. He has more wins in his first 50 matches than any teenager in men’s tennis during the Open Era.

Jódar’s historic ascent is surprising even to his peers.

“I didn’t expect there to be another college guy within three years who was 500 in the world and then top 20 within a year,” Shelton said in a news conference Tuesday, laughing in disbelief. “He’s probably going to be top 10 and outdo me, or what I did in 2023. He’s got a great game, a complete game, good athlete. Forehand, backhand, return up there with the best in the world.”

Tien called Jódar “probably the player to beat”, despite Shelton being the tournament’s defending champion, as well as the highest-ranked and most established player in the final four.

The buzz around the Spanish teenager has taken on a different tone lately, certainly from the fresh wonder that surrounded him this spring, when he first started stringing together wins on clay.

Like many shooting stars, Jódar has the necessary raw materials to make it to the very top. Like fewer of them, he has anchored his rise by excelling in the parts of tennis that don’t always come easily to prodigies.

His groundstrokes shred, even if, as a whippet-thin teen, he still needs to throw his entire body behind them. His levering limbs, focused attitude and consistent hitting summon hazy images of Sinner. He is 6 feet 3 inches (191cm), with solid footwork and the sprawling hands of an NBA player.

The first serve remains a work in progress; the percentage of points he wins off it (71) is bang on the ATP Tour average. But it’s Jódar’s return, which he hits flat and hard off both wings at improbable angles again and again, that sets him apart.

Almost everyone in men’s tennis has a big enough serve they can ratchet up these days, which increases the potency of a great returner exponentially.

Jódar’s win-rate on first-serve returns puts him in contention with Sinner and Alcaraz, but for now he takes bigger cuts than them. Against truly elite servers — such as Taylor Fritz, who beat Jódar in the D.C. Open final at the start of the month — his front-foot style can lead to more errors, but he has room to add some chipped finesse to that part of his game.

Asked if he felt the cumulative pressure of Jódar’s returning, coupled with his baseline game Tuesday, Fils opted not to answer verbally, instead closing his eyes and giving an exaggerated nod, politely underscoring the obviousness of the question.

“His forehand is insane, his backhand is top, return very good. He’s a very good competitor,” Fils said in a news conference, pausing to smile. “We will have 10 very fun years.”

Their rivalry is already off to a cracking start, with Jódar claiming two recent victories after Fils beat him on clay in April in the semifinals of the Barcelona Open. Even those two wins should provide a hint that Jódar’s rise might be different.

Young, ascendant players tend to have two things on their side early in their careers — mystery and freedom. Their opponents don’t know much about them yet, and expectations are low.

Playing opponents a second time around, once they’ve had a chance to figure out a young player’s game style, can be jarring, as can navigating a sophomore season. Becoming a favorite rather than an underdog completely changes the pressure dynamics of tennis, which ebb and flow even from game to game as scoreboard pressure shifts.

“Definitely there are some moments where I realize I’m going into matches where there’s more pressure on me instead of always my opponents like it was last year,” said Tien, who beat Spain’s Daniel Mérida to make his first 1,000-level semifinal Tuesday.

For Fils, Jódar proved just as difficult to beat the second time around on a hard court as the first in the opening round in Washington, where the score was exactly the same.

The Spaniard looked utterly comfortable Tuesday, content to let his more extroverted opponent tire himself out with brief emotional outbursts.

Jódar kicked off the match with a 3-0 lead by goading Fils, who often straddles the line between big, fearless tennis and going for too much, into overhitting. When Fils used his superior physicality to draw him into grinding rallies and broke back to even the first set, Jódar kept calm. He zipped to a 4-1 lead in the tiebreak before serving out the first set.

In the second, Jódar’s ability to absorb Fils’ power frustrated the Frenchman so much that he earned a code violation for a racket smash. Jódar saved his emotion for after the final ball, when he pumped his fists and tilted his head back to release a primal yell.

That’s the most expression fans are likely to see from him, aside from the occasional gesture of mid-match annoyance or a bark at his box and himself. “I think you have to play your game and try to be relaxed, y’know, when things are getting a bit close in the set,” he said in a news conference.

Jódar looks more intense and locked in than relaxed during matches, but that’s his nature all the time, he said in an interview. His friends tease him for it, while the player himself attributes his ease in front of cameras and reporters to his parents, both of whom were teachers and placed a premium on his education. He credits his facility with English to the year he spent playing college tennis at the University of Virginia across 2024 and 2025.

“I never left studies when I was younger,” he said, in contrast to many serious young tennis players who opt out of traditional schooling. All four of the Montreal semifinalists played college tennis, with Jódar and Brandon Nakashima, the elder of the quartet at 25 and Jódar’s semifinal opponent, both attending Virginia.

A Madrid native, Jódar grew up watching his namesake Rafael Nadal, and attended the Madrid Open as a youngster. He picked up a racket at age 4 for fun, then later played as a way to spend time with his father, Rafael Snr, a largely self-taught tennis coach who still guides his career today. He often sits alone in his son’s box.

“It was to have fun, spend some hours with my dad. The main reason (I play) is to have fun, still,” Jódar said, cracking a small smile at the contrast between the mission statement and the way in which he goes about that mission.

To relax, he listens to reggaeton in his hotel room, or works his way through “Breaking Bad”, which he first picked up two years ago on a friend’s recommendation.

Jódar, who is crafting one of the most impressive breakout seasons in men’s tennis, took a while to get into the show.

He thought it started too slowly.