Rafael Jodar is chasing history and a villain label in his first year on tour

Rafael Jodar is currently sitting 11th in the race to the Nitto ATP Finals, 121 points behind No. 8 Ben Shelton for the last spot.

If you just asked “so what?” then allow me to enlighten you. Jodar turned pro on December 30, 2025. If he manages to qualify for the Finals, he will become the first man in the history of the ATP to reach the year-end championships in his debut professional season. Not Roger Federer. Not Rafael Nadal. Not Novak Djokovic. Nobody.

And here’s the stranger part. He might also become the first player ever to qualify for both the NextGen ATP Finals and the “big kid” Finals in the same season. Alexander Zverev, Holger Rune, and Carlos Alcaraz all came close, but none of them got over the finish line.

I bring this up because, in my mind, Jodar is now one of the favorites to win the Montreal Masters. And if he does, I see few scenarios that he does NOT make it to Turin. Yeah, the draw in Montreal is decimated because half of the top 10 forwent it completely and the rest are dropping like flies. Still, this isn’t just opportunistic scavenging. He made the quarters at Roland Garros and the final in Washington last week. He is BIG news.

You’d think tennis would be thrilled about this. Instead, a decent chunk of the sport can’t stand him.

The lowlight reel writes itself. At Roland Garros in May, Jodar was accused of shoving a ballgirl during his five-set slog past Alex Michelsen — a clip that went viral within hours in its most damning, cropped form. The full sequence from a different angle shows the girl tripping while backing out of Jodar’s path as he gestured toward his father in the box. Jodar denied it flatly in his press conference. “I could never do that,” he said. Fair enough. Honestly, I think he was just being temperamental at his father, not the ballgirl.

But the shove clip landed on fertile ground, because Jodar already built a reputation. He snapped at a ball boy over a slow towel, yanked his racket back from a ballgirl without so much as a nod. And he recently reacted dramatically when a ballkid accidentally threw a ball near him when he was about to return serve. By the time Wimbledon rolled around and another ball-kid moment went viral, fans had their verdict in. Arrogant. Cold. Rude. Testy. Pick your adjective. And keep in mind he has been playing professional tennis for a mere eight months.

Some of the aura probably traces back to how he got here. Jodar didn’t come up through the usual academy pipeline. He spent 2024 and part of 2025 at the University of Virginia, where he was named ITA National Rookie of the Year and later became the first Cavalier ever to reach a Grand Slam quarterfinal. It could be some residual elite university energy…although you didn’t hear me say so.

His only coach, before UVA and after it, has been his father — a self-taught coach who came to tennis after years spent coaching women’s basketball. As one of his UVA assistant coaches memorably put it, “He wants Rafa to have adversity.” As it turns out, Rafa (v.2) is good at making his own adversity. And since he has already beaten Alex de Minaur, Lorenzo Musetti, and Joao Fonseca before his 20th birthday, it’s kind of hard to argue the process.

It’s pretty damning…and yet, I caution against jumping to conclusions. He’s a teen and while he’s something of a wunderkind on court, he still has some growing up to do. We’ve also seen this movie before. A teenage Novak Djokovic used to do impressions of Federer and Nadal (and others) as a joke…except his targets weren’t laughing and they weren’t charmed. He built a reputation for gamesmanship, for screaming at ball kids, for supposedly “playing possum” whenever a match slipped away from him, and throwing tantrums on court.

It took years — and no small number of controversies — for Djokovic to grow into the measured statesman we mostly see today (excepting the on-court tantrums, since they still happen occasionally). Some fans never fully came around on him, but the sport is better for having let him grow into himself instead of writing him off at 19.

Jodar is 19 right now. He has a father instead of a team, a stoic streak instead of a smile, and a habit of catching cameras at his worst angle, literally, in the case of that French Open clip. None of that makes him likable at the moment. But it’s a long career, and a kid chasing history deserves the same runway we eventually gave the last surly genius.

Yes, I recognize that Jimmy Connors never did grow into the elder statesman, so it’s possible Jodar will just be the villain he appears to be today. But give him a few more years before you decide who he is.

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