The best male player in the history of tennis without a Grand Slam title is Chilean Marcelo Ríos, Greg Rusedski says. Getting to world number one cannot compare to anything else, despite the Olympic gold and another 23 ATP titles under Alexander Zverev’s belt.
“Rios is the best player in the history of the sport to never win a Slam. He was the world number one,” Rusedski, the 1998 Paris-Bercy champion, told CLAY and RG Media.
“Better than Zverev? Oh, yeah. No question about it. Unfortunately for Marcelo, he wasn’t able to have a long enough career to achieve that goal of winning a major. That’s the only thing against his record,” said the former player born in Canada, who represented Great Britain for most of his career.
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Ríos won five Masters 1000 titles between 1997 and 1999. He was world No. 1 for six weeks and a finalist at the 1998 Australian Open, before retiring from tennis in 2004.
The 28-year-old German, for his part, owns seven Masters 1000 trophies, has played three Grand Slam finals, won Olympic gold in Tokyo and, twice, the ATP Finals.
“The talent Marcelo had was off the charts. Incredible. There’s no player with his hands and he had everything in the game. What a great champion he was,” said Rusedski, who now works as a tennis commentator for several TV stations.
Had he not been hampered by so many injuries, Rusedski believes Ríos would have been a Grand Slam champion on three of the sport’s four biggest stages. “I think he would have won multiple Slams. You can see him winning in Paris. He lost in the Australian Open final. Hard courts in New York — there’s no reason he wouldn’t be successful there. I think the one that would have been tough for him to win is Wimbledon. The other Slams, no question about it, he could have won them all.”
The former world No. 4 shared the same era as the Chilean: they faced each other once, in the 1998 Indian Wells final. Six months earlier, Rusedski had lost the US Open final to Patrick Rafter, while Ríos fell to Petr Korda later in Melbourne.
“I played one of my best matches in my life and still ended up second,” recalls the Brit.
A few weeks after defeating Rusedski in California, Ríos beat Andre Agassi in the Miami final and became the world’s top player, taking the No. 1 spot from Pete Sampras.
“I remember Indian Wells very well. I lost in four sets, two tiebreakers, and 6-4 in the fourth set. Marcelo could just lob. He could defend. He could do everything — drop shot, take the ball so early….”
“Unfortunately for me, all the passing shots went right, left, and above my head. I couldn’t win the big points. I held my serve, but Marcelo at that stage was by far the best player on the planet,” said to CLAY the left-handed former player with a one-handed backhand, winner of 14 ATP titles.
