#NextGenATP Engel on being inspired by Nadal & the moment he chose tennis

  • Posted: Oct 15, 2024

Rafael Nadal’s storied playing career may be drawing to a close, but the Spaniard’s legacy will likely continue to inspire future generations of ATP Tour stars. Just ask Justin Engel.

On Monday, Engel defeated Coleman Wong at the Almaty Open to become the first player born in 2007 or later to win an ATP Tour match. The #NextGenATP German, who was making his tour-level debut as a wild card, saved nine of 10 break points he faced against Wong. It was a display of resilience under pressure that his tennis hero would have been proud of.

“Rafa was always my idol,” Engel told ATPTour.com ahead of his second-round meeting with Francisco Cerundolo at the Kazakhstani ATP 250. “I loved watching him play and also wanted to be like him on the court, mentally always pushing and fighting and everything. He was my favourite player since I was a kid.

“On court, mentally and everything, I would say I’m not [exactly] like Nadal, because we are all different, but I’m always fighting and pushing. I was always a fighter on the court.”

Monday’s win against Wong was a reward for the hard work that Engel and his father (and coach) Horst have put in since he was three years old. The German also did kickboxing to a high level between the ages of eight and 12, but says that some early successes with a racquet in his hand convinced him that tennis was his future.

“I started playing when I was three years old in Nuremberg with my dad,” recalled Engel. “But I was inspired to play tennis [seriously] because I won tournaments and that gave me a good feeling. I won the national Under-11 tournament, which was special for me, because it was only the third tournament I had ever played in my life.”

Away from tennis, Engel is a big fan of football star Cristiano Ronaldo and basketball icon LeBron James, and he enjoys watching TV series The Walking Dead and listening to The Weeknd. He is also multilingual: in addition to German, he speaks English and Romanian and can also understand Russian.

“I lived for three years in Moldova with my grandma and grandpa, so I speak Romanian,” Engel explained. “I also understand everything in Russian, but I can’t speak it anymore. I forgot it.

“I was almost more in Moldova than Germany at one point, from when I was two to five years old. When I turned five, I came back to Germany and went to school. I had a pretty hard time at first at school in Germany, because I could not speak that good German.”

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Engel, who lives and trains in the city of his birth, Nuremburg, may only have turned 17 two weeks ago, but he already has a good idea of the highs and lows of competitive tennis. After struggling for positive results in 2023 and early 2024, he won his maiden ITF World Tennis Tour event in May in Villach, Austria. He has won three further ITF titles since, and earlier this month notched his maiden ATP Challenger Tour main-draw victories to reach the quarter-finals at an event in Villena, Spain.

Engel’s surge has been reflected in his dramatic rise in the PIF ATP Rankings. Outside the Top 1200 as recently as May, the 17-year-old rose 63 spots to No. 395 in the PIF ATP Live Rankings after defeating Wong in Almaty.

“Last year and at the start of this year, I had a lot of bad luck with matches. I always lost in the third set in juniors,” said Engel. “I trained so much and it didn’t work in these tournaments. I didn’t win many matches.

“Then, suddenly I won that Futures tournament in Austria, and suddenly everything was possible for me. I won lots of matches and got confidence. It was pretty surprising for me that it worked out like this.”

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