PARIS: The Spanish tennis star Rafael Nadal on Wednesday became only the fourth player to earn 1,000 Open Era singles victories.
Nadal achieved the milestone after securing a 4-6, 7-6(5), 6-4 win over Feliciano Lopez in the ongoing Paris Masters. With this win, he joined Jimmy Connors (1,274), Roger Federer (1,242) and Ivan Lendl (1,068) in the 1,000-win club.
The 34-year-old expressed elation over touching the "special number" and said winning that many games mean "I am old".
"That means that I am old. That means that I played well for such a very long time, because to achieve that number is because I have been playing well for a lot of years and is something that makes me feel happy, no? I just can say thank you very much to all the people that helped me and all the people that in any moment of my life helped me to be where I am, no?" Paris Masters' official website quoted Nadal as saying.
"It has been a special moment. I know is a very special number, 1000. Even if it's not the same to celebrate something like this without a crowd, I enjoy it with ATP, with the president of the French Federation, with Guy Forget, supervisor and the ball boys," he added.