Francisco Clavet

Francisco Javier Clavet González de Castejón (born 24 October 1968), known as Pato Clavet, is a former professional tennis player from Spain.

He is one of the few people to accomplish this since 1978.

Clavet turned pro in 1988 and won his first ATP singles title two years later at the Dutch Open in Hilversum.

He won five consecutive matches to capture the title.

He was considered (along with Sergi Bruguera) the best male Spanish player on hard and indoor courts in the early 1990s, and also the best male Spanish player on grass courts during the 1990s and the early years of the 2000s.

In 1991, he was among the top 30 players, and reached the semifinals in five different tournaments.

He won eight singles titles, reached the semifinals of the 1992 Indian Wells Masters and the 1999 Miami Masters, and achieved a career-high ranking of world No. 18 in July 1992.

Despite not winning a tournament, his best year was 1992, and resulted in his best ranking (No. 18).

That year he reached the finals in Gstaad and San Marino, the semifinals in Philadelphia, Indian Wells, in Madrid, in Palermo and Athens, and the quarterfinals in Indianapolis, and in Schenectady.

In 1993, his best result saw him reach the semifinals in Genoa.

He lost to the eventual champion Thomas Muster.

He reached the quarterfinals three times in clay-court tournaments.

He played two finals, losing to Alberto Berasategui in 1994.

In addition, he reached two semifinals in Athens and Buenos Aires, losing, again to the eventual winners (Àlex Corretja and Alberto Berasategui).

He also reached the quarterfinals in four clay-court tournaments.

In 1995, he won the tournament of Sicilia (now played in the city of Palermo) and reached the semifinals in Mexico City, Porto, Umag and Montevideo.

He won the Amsterdam Open in 1996 (defeating Younes El Aynaoui), and reached the semifinals in Mexico and Bologna.

He also reached the quarterfinals in: Antwerp, Estoril, St. Pölten, Gstaad, Stuttgart, Bucharest, and Palermo.

He had won in Sicilia the year before, but this time lost to Karim Alami.

In 1997, he won two consecutive titles, Acapulco and Bogotá, which gave him a record of 19 wins/four losses from the US Open.

He also played the final in Estoril losing to countryman Àlex Corretja.

The same year he also reached two semifinals, Tashkent and Bucharest, but lost to Tim Henman and Richard Fromberg, respectively.

The Tashkent tournament was played on a carpet surface, and his was the best performance of a Spanish male tennis player on this surface in 1997.

He won two other titles in 1998: Santiago and Bucharest.

He managed to reach two other semifinals: Mexico and Kitzbühel.

He also performed well in Grand Slams tournaments.

He repeated his best achievements at Roland Garros and the Australian Open (fourth and third round, respectively) and reached the fourth round at Wimbledon, delivering a surprise upset by defeating the second-seeded, and world No. 2, Marcelo Ríos, in a five-set match in the first round.

Rios underestimated Clavet and lamented the lost match by attacking the grass surface

Clavet was coached by his brother, José Clavet, until 1999.

In 1999, after the success of the previous past two years and winning at least one tournament during the past four years, he ended the year without winning a title.

He reached the semifinals of the Miami Masters and Barcelona Open, which were his best performances.

He also reached the quarterfinals in Dubai (losing to eventual finalist Nicolas Kiefer; he defeated hard-court specialists including Wayne Ferreira and Greg Rusedski), at St. Pölten, Gstaad, Umag and the Mallorca Open.

Clavet began improving his hard-court game and was called to play for the Davis Cup for the first time, facing a difficult qualifying round but playing well.

He came close to defeating his nemesis Pete Sampras, who was top-ranked for most of Clavet's career, in the 1999 Paris Open.

Sampras finished the match injured and was forced to withdraw from the tournament after winning at the tie-break of the final set in a very tough match.

In his only meeting with Federer, at the 2000 Cincinnati Masters, Clavet won and told Swiss newspaper Blick his defeat of Federer was one of his most important wins as he considers Federer "the greatest tennis player of all time".

He reached No. 16 at the Champions Race (now called ATP Race to London), after winning in Scottsdale in 2001.

During his career, he defeated some contemporary, future and past number-one-ranked players, including John McEnroe, Mats Wilander, Andre Agassi, Lleyton Hewitt, and Roger Federer.

From 2001 until his retirement in 2003, he was coached by Uruguayan Bebe Pérez.

(Leonardo Mayer was the last player to win five matches in a row, doing so at the 2017 German Open in Hamburg.)