Steve: Thanks for the very nice article. Yesterday, he said he wished he could've said goodbye at one of the big tournaments. It looks like he's going to get his chance because he's going to be in London, he actually left with Rafa. So hopefully, the ATP will give a nice send-off.

Moya was a gentleman, an example of balance in tennis and life! He never lost himself in being a star!!! One more that will be missed!!!

575 wins def doesn't make him 4th all-time, not even top ten. Roger has 738-ish and is ninth all-time from what I can see.
Maybe Moya is fourth active??

Moya was great
Moya was weird,
Carlos the half-Picasso, half-Rodin,
Tattoed Carlos the Mallorcan Thinking Man
with the racquet in his hand.

I remember seeing Moya at IW in that last century. We were both young, Charlie. You always had style.

True, Steve, Carlos perfected the bizarre left-alley forehand, about as recommended on a tennis court as unprotected s&x in real life. That hollow look, yeah - but I never could tell if he was deep or faking deep. :)

what a lovely send-off to moya, steve.

he was my first tennis crush :) it was the 1997 AO that turned me into a tennis fan. i have very little memory now of moya, his game and his personality (plus the internet that could feed your "obsessions" wasn't big yet back when i started following tennis), but reading your post, i find myself nodding and remembering. thanks!

Very nice read, Steve.

I think of Carlos as a John-the-Baptist to Nadal's....Sorry I don't mean that. No offense! Just joking.

While I won't miss him in the same way I miss Safin, Carlos Moya was one of those players who spanned generations and simply seemed like he was always "there" and would always be there.

I also hope he gets a fitting send-off in London. And maybe in the future he'll decide to be a mere tourist in Umag, which I believe was the tournament he won most often. I'll have to check-out what Croatian papers have to say, as he's long been a favorite over there.

Te extrañaremos...

Are we having a kind of tribute to every retiring player now? lol.

Moya didn't do much for me. I don't think the bulk of his career stands out much in fact - the last 12 years, he was a very ordinary player by the standards of the top players (although not by those of us ordinary mortals of course). I'd be amazed if he's 4th in match wins on the ATP career list although he did play a long time.

Moya (like Hewitt) had an early but brief rise, and then was never able to regain those heights or really come close to them. That's an interesting phenomenon - or mysterious as Steve says here. Did they just seize a opening (good for them) but never really had the stature to stay at that level? Did they have some minor loss of mental edge that makes all the difference? (The latter struck me as a possible reason for Courier seemingly inexplicably falling back after a great early run - far ahead of either of those two but likewise couldn't sustain it.)

The turning point for me for Moya looking back seems to have been the 99 FO - he'd got to #1 seed & was defending champion. In a match almost everyone expected him to win, he lost to Agassi from being ahead in what was it - the round of 16? Seemingly he was never the same player, certainly nothing like comparable results after that. Whereas Agassi really never looked back from there.

It can be a strange game.

Awesome piece of work, Steve. It was like reading poetry, hardly a word wasted, and very little embellishment, as none was needed.

I always viewed Carlos Moya as a bit of a tragic figure, in the sense that he, like Chang a decade before him, had ascended so high so young, only to never reach that peak again. Yet, unlike Chang who clawed his way to a perennial top-3 ranking (an earlier incarnation of Djokovic, perhaps?), Moya seemed doomed to succumb time and again to his and the public's inflated expectations. For him it seemed, despitee what he has said publicly, seemed to have lost some of its sheen after seeing Agassi and then Hewitt and then Roddick and then Federer and now his own protege (if you'll allow me the indulgence) to steal the stage.

But I also liked and admired Carlos for the good man that he was on the court and to his fellow competitors and the public. He'll be missed, even if it was rare to see him into the second week.

Good article.

I met an experienced spanish tennis coach coaching a young female tennis player in 2004, at an airport in London. I asked him why, considering moya appeared to have more natural talent (whatever that is) then juan carlos ferrero,
he was achieving a lot less (at that time ferrero was doing very well).

He smiled and answered that Moya always liked the nightlife and the young female player with him laughed and nodded. I thought it was an interesting observation.

Moya was a great asset for tennis with his game and personality.He deserves praise and tribute even though he was not a multiple slam winner.He just was unlucky with his injuries.

Very good article---and as we've recently seen--besides Moya--other unique and memorable players like Santoro and Dementieva move on--it's a great reminder how much more tennis is than just counting majors.

didnt this guy d*ck over flavia p ? or was that some other guy ? regardless, i always liked moya... it also says alot about the state of the game nowadays that we cant write a 15-yr tour veterans tennis obituary w/o making mention of nadal or federer

I'm sorry to see Moya leave the stage, but then again he hasn't really been on it for quite some time. I always enjoyed watching him play.

It's entirely possible that my memory isn't that accurate, but my recollection is that he moved forward and volleyed quite a bit, and quite well, in that big Australian showing. I always wondered why he never seemed to play that way again; if anything he became more dependent on his forehand and more backhand adverse. Go figure.

Moya-never thought of him as a threat to win major or masters.The fellow was...like Blake-only in the draw for some thrills and then lose.nEVER thought that he was dangerous.mOYA WAS AN ordinary player,just another one of the 128 in a slam who did not fancy himself winning the thing.Very ordinary player,a journeyman...like Todd MARTIN.

Most of us women will remember Carlos Moya for the horrible way he treated that wonderful Flavia Panetta
They wetre engaged to be married, even picked out furniture, and he cheated on her--- at best he did not have the basic decency or guts to tell her that he was not ready!
Good luck to the woman that had the baby with him!!

Some of us men also remember him for cheating on Pennetta - as in, "what kind of idiot would do that?"

Nevertheless, I remember enjoying watching him play as a kid, enough that I bought the same kind of shirt he was wearing at one US Open. I also remember that great match against Henman from Wimbledon a few years ago. Good luck to him.

Always thought of Moya as an overachiever before the rise of Federer and Nadal. He didn't have a powerful game. He didn't have a very creative game. He was just steady and consistent. Yet, he is a Grand Slam Winner, a former number 1 and a Davis Cup champion. That's pretty overachieving for a guy with limited weapons and talent.

I really did enjoy watching Moya play. He was always a sentimental favorite of mine in every match he played. Who can forget that epic with Henman in the first round of wimbledon 2007? Now as he walks away from the sport, I wonder which was his best achievement. Winning the FO, achieving the No 1 ranking, or being the mentor of Nadal. In any case, I wish him the best in his tennis after life as it were.

Moya had regal presence, and visually impressive game. He always had "great player" aura around him. He had huge forehand (one of the best in the last 20 years), big serve, moved pretty well for a big guy, and wasn't afraid to volley. He was not a grinder like lots of the '90s claycourters.

He suffered a major injury in 1999 but he made it back to top 5 and was very solid top-10 player for quite some time after that - very impressive and much underrated achievement. Most players fade for good after that. He beat peak Hewitt at Cincinnati finals, when Hewitt was undisputable master of hardcourts.

But he never was a great Slam player...his one Slam win came against his good friend Corretja who really wasn't fighting tooth & nail in that match. He nearly always seemed to blew big matches. And yeah, he was popular with the ladies, and that led to his downfall - at least with Flavia...

Moya making fun of young Rafa, in one of Nadal firsts Us Open, (story told by Nadal in a radio interview a few weeks ago)

..Years ago in New York, Nadal wanted to watch a Formula 1 race,to watch Spanish car driver Fernando Alonso, it was 6 or 7.00 am in New York, and he called Moya to watch the race because in the USA the Formula One, is usually in pay per view, and Moya told Nadal: How? You are not watching the race, I´m watching it in my room,in channel 63 but you need a special remote control, you have to call reception and ask for the special remove, so Nadal called reception with his great English of his first years in the ATP, "I need the special remove to watch Formula One" but in reception is Nadal that they did´nt have the special remove, so Nadal called back Moya,asking him to watch the race in Moya´s room, but Moya was with his girlfriend at the moment, and told him that she was sleeping, so he couldn´t come up, after 30 minutes of Nadal fighting in the phone with Moya commentating the race to Nadal, saying unbelievable race, you must watch it,ends with Nadal going up, and Moya was at the door rolling on the floor laughing because of the joke.....,he was watching it with his girlfriend of the moment, by internet and not by the tv with the special remove.

Great article for a great champion

I watched him live at the Luanco tournament, Spain (a tournament played on the beach after the tide has gone out) and I thought his style was majestic. It really impressed me watching him live. However, I don't know if that means much in order to win majors... It was fun to see, though, and he will be missed a lot.

Thanks Steve for this lovely send off for a classy guy on court. You're right, he was surprisingly articulate in English! I love that moment on Tennis channel where he says how he admired Stefan Edberg, even though his game was nothing like Edberg's, and then he laughs. (Though charming, I always thought that was the strangest comment, and wonder now if it had anything to do with his not really advancing in his career).

Carlos Moya and Guillermo Coria seem like two tragic clay court figures to me. Your comment about the emotion that ran deep was also true of Coria. Coria was simply brilliant on clay. A maestro. So maybe there is something in the tenacity it takes to play Spanish-style clay court tennis that takes a huge toll on a player emotionally?

Thanks Steve. Excellent article. Rafa's been very fortunate to have a mentor like Carlos. Here's a video of Rafa and Carlos moments through the years. It's in Mallorqui but the pictures tell the story.

http://ib3noticies.com/20101117_118542-moya-va-obrir-el-cami-a-nadal-2.html

16 players have won 600 or more matches in the open era. Goran Ivanisevic won 599....so Carlos is up there with Brad Gilbert, Bjorn Borg, Roscoe tanner, and others in the 500, but less than 600 club.....far from Jimmy Connors's 1200+ or Ivan Lendl (2nd place) just over 1000.....Guillermo Vilas had over 900, Sampras and Agassi in the 800's, and the other 600+ included Arthur Ashe and Stan Smith, as well as Edberg and Becker....but not Wilander (I'm doing all this from memory, so I better look it up)....in terms of top 4 ACTIVE.....obviously Fed is ahead of him, but who else? Rafa? Probably Roddick, maybe Hewitt...I'll check.....

I think Rafa was very fortunate to have a "big bro" like Carlos.
We've been hearing a lot about Moya saying he had very little to do with helping shape Rafa's tennis ability, but i'm guessing he's had a lot to do with shaping Rafa's values.

The "there are plenty of things more important than tennis" plus the
"he never lost himself in being a star" that someone mentioned above seem really fundamental parts of the way Rafa operates that it's impossible not to make that connection. I mean, it's all very well to come up with these grand ideas, but having someone modelling how it's done - that's a rare gift.

Loved the video, thanks Jackson!!

*Steve, he also made the semis in US Open, where he lost in a great match against Todd Martin.

I had the chance to interview Moya and to see him behind the scenes in Acapulco and he was always the same guy, gentle and humble, with a great personality, a very strong presence.

I think his game, when on, was as powerful as it was exquisite, a Letal forehand (defenetly one of the best of all time), powerful serve, beautiful and deceptive drop shot and good volley. Of course when he was stretched to a limit, it was his backhand the one that betrayed him and let him down. But overall i think his main enemies, where the injuries... he had a couple of great comebacks after major physical letdowns but then there where too many.

He is gonna be missed, specially in Mexico where he was a regular, i expect a great goodbye for him in London in a similar fashion than the one given to Dementieva. Nice article by the way Steve...

I enjoyed watching Moya too and I know he continues to be a positive force in Rafa's life. But ever since I read about what happened with Flavia, I have struggled to maintain a high opinion of him. It's funny - what he does in his personal life shouldn't affect our perceptions of him as a tennis player. But these days, character seems to count for more in our regard of athletes (see Woods, Tiger). When you read this article and realize how much Moya derailed not only Flavia's life but her game and her career, it's hard to be too sympathetic toward him. Still, I wish him the best in his new life.
http://straightsets.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/02/bagels-for-breakfast-cakewalk-for-pennetta/?scp=5&sq=flavia%20pennetta&st=cse

You know, Steve, you can directly refer to Moya as handsome. Writing that you've been told he is handsome, when you have seen him countless times yourself, and in person, is ridiculous and immature. You have eyes. You can see that he is a handsome man. That's not a reflection on sexuality. It's a reflection of how Moya is viewed.

Grand slam winner, former number 1, Davis Cup Champion & Rafa's mentor......I am sure Carlos will look back & be happy with what he has achieved.

Not many players can have a resume that looks like that!

Great article & all the best to Moya.

Nice article Steve.

Steve,
Time flies: I watched Moya beat Nadal at Key Biscayne a few years ago. The controlled violence of his forehand was a beautiful thing to watch up close ...

Doing a cameo in a Spanish funny film
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BfkDmABHsRw
Mentoring with the serve
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EEsjQUCKq6A

Not every player can win multiple (or even one) slams; or stay at #1 (or even get there) for a record # of weeks. That doesn't mean they aren't champions and don't make the sport better or more entertaining. Moya did that. He was a champion, a gentleman, a great player. He had a great career and he will be missed.

let's celebrate moya as the player he was in his own right. no need to bring up his legacy as it relates to nadal. it seems like youre punished for helping people out in this world. when you do get recognition, it comes with caveats. i say lets stop it here. moya reached no1, was first player from mallorca to win a gslam, 575 match wins, not too shabby.

Great article Steve. I had heard that Moya is natural lefty playing with his right hand. Do you know if this is true? If it is, how ironic that he mentors Rafa who is a rightie playing with his left.

He may have a Grand Slam title last century but it seems Moya's mark will be his influence on Nadal.

@truth:
touche... not as abrasive a pt to make as you make it sound.. that line does come off self-consciously homophobic, although im sure steve isnt