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Nadal among the great teenage athletes

By Whit Sheppard
Special to ESPN.com

Friday, June 9, 2006

PARIS -- His coming-out party took place on one of tennis' grandest stages, in front of a record crowd of 27,000-plus flag-waving countrymen in Seville's Olympic Stadium. On that cool, early December day in 2004, 18-year-old Rafael Nadal Parera stared down the pressure and then-world No. 2 Andy Roddick in the second rubber of the Davis Cup finals, beating the more-seasoned American in four taut sets on red clay to stake his beloved Espaņa to what proved to be an insurmountable 2-0 lead. Nadal' ...

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