Nadal, first tennis player in history to be number one in three decades: “It makes me feel old”

Newly-married Rafa, 33, is embroiled in the ATP Cup at present, where Spain has just beaten Georgia and Uruguay and is through to the third round, showing it is a force to be reckoned with, having also recently won the Davis Cup.

And Spain's star player has started the New Year as ATP number one, something he also achieved in the 2010s and the 2000s.

The Manacor-born star was asked by reporters in Perth, Australia 'what his secret was'.

Rafa first shot to number one in 2008, a year when he won Wimbledon for the first time after an agonising final against Switzerland's Roger Federer, and also took his fourth consecutive Paris Open title at the Roland Garros stadium – a competition he has now won 12 times.

Here, Nadal beat his two biggest rivals, Federer and Serbia's Novak Djoković, and later, won his first Olympic medal, a gold in Peking, as well as being on the winning team of his second of two Davis Cup victories.

Once again, he sealed his place as one of the top tennis players in history by returning to number one in 2010 – and since then, he has won 14 Grand Slam titles.

Dubbed 'The King of Clay', Nadal's star tournament is, clearly, the Paris Open, although the two he has struggled with in the last decade have been the Australian Open, which he has not won since 2009, and Wimbledon which, after winning in 2008 and 2010, he has only reached the final of once, in 2011.

After being forced to scratch from the London 2012 Olympics – where he would have been flag-bearer for Spain – due to injury, Rafa won a gold in the doubles at Río 2016, where he was finally able to carry the flag, and he has repeated his excellent performance in the Davis Cup, with wins for Spain in 2011 and 2019 – when the final was held in Madrid.

Now, at the dawn of a new decade – although there is some debate as to whether the decade actually starts until the beginning of 2021 – Rafa is a stone's throw from levelling up with Federer's record of the most Grand Slam titles in history, having won 19 to his Swiss rival's 20.

He is also gunning for the Golden Grand Slam, which he will achieve if he wins four Grand Slam tournaments in one year, and will be going for gold at Tokyo 2020.

Rafa married his long-term – and only – girlfriend, María Francisca 'Mery' Perelló, in October 2019, having proposed to her on holiday in Rome in May 2018.

The couple appeared to be in no hurry to tie the knot, since they started going out with each other when Nadal was 19 and Mery 16, two years after his sister, Mery's closest friend at school, introduced them.