WITH no live tennis on currently due to the COVID-19 global pandemic, Draft Central will take a look back at some of the best players of past and present and rank them based on a specific set of guidelines. In our first Top 10 countdown, we look at the Top 10 ATP Players to never have won a Grand Slam title, moving onto our second ranked player, a Chilean who never got to fulfil his potential due to debilitating injuries.

#2 Marcelo Rios (583 matches – 67.1% winning record, 18 career titles, #1 career-high ranking)

Seeing Marcelo Rios at number two might be a surprise for some considering he played about half the matches that some others on this list played. But the Chilean was absolutely deadly throughout his ultimately short career which lasted a decade from the mid-90s to the mid-2000s. What makes him special is the fact Rios is the only player in the Open era to have reached world number one in the ATP Tour rankings and never won a Grand Slam. It is not exactly a title anyone would want to have, but it shows just how successful he was outside the four majors. He still reached an Australian Open final – back in 1998 – but went down to Czech, Petr Korda in straight sets. Now Rios only won 18 career titles – less than those on this list around him – but his 1998 season was about as good as one could be without a major of those times. Keeping in mind he was still only 22-years-old at the time, Rios won three ATP Masters 1000 titles – at Indian Wells, Miami and Rome – as well as the Grand Slam Cup, which is a bitter pill to swallow despite the success because that tournament was for those who performed best at Grand Slams that year. The Australian Open final was the only final he lost that year. To put it in perspective, Rios won 26 out of 27 matches from March to June in a remarkable run of form.

Rios has plenty of other interesting facts he holds to his name, becoming the first ever player to win all three clay court 1000 Masters tournaments, as well as the third overall and first non-United States representative to complete the Sunshine Double (Indian Wells and Miami) in one year. After such a successful year, why did Rios drop off? Injuries. They started up in 1999, having to retire from the Monte Carlo Masters finals due to a hand injury. Unfortunately that was just the beginning of the end for the Chilean who battled repeated injuries on and off from the turn of the century with an ankle operation and persistent back problems hurling him down the ATP Tour rankings. It was a sad way for Rios to eventually end his career, retiring in 2004 having last played on the ATP Tour in May 2003, and last Challenger event in April, 2004 where he retired from both matches. Such was his popularity, Rios had a farewell tour in Chile, playing a number of friendlies.

Despite his career ending some 14 years earlier, Rios played a friendly against Ecuadorian Nicolas Lapentti in 2018 which he won in three sets, and even hinted at returning to the Tour to become the oldest ever winner of a Challenger event. The fiery Chilean was not without his controversial moments on and off the court, but when it came to pure ability, he was a special talent and no doubt would not have qualified for this list if he had stayed fit because he was a Grand Slam winner in the making.

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Top 10 ATP Players without a Grand Slam title:

#10 Wojciech Fibak (Poland)
#9 Fernando Gonzales (Chile)
#8 Tim Henman (Great Britain)
#7 Robin Soderling (Sweden)
#6 David Nalbandian (Argentina)
#5 Tomas Berdych (Czech Republic)
#4 Brian Gottfried (USA)
#3 Tom Okker (Netherlands)
#2 Marcelo Rios (Chile)