Joan Manel Balcells Fornaguera (; born 20 June 1975) is a retired professional
tennis
Tennis is a List of racket sports, racket sport that is played either individually against a single opponent (singles (tennis), singles) or between two teams of two players each (doubles (tennis), doubles). Each player uses a tennis racket st ...
player from Spain. He won one
ATP Tour
The ATP Tour (known as ATP World Tour between January 2009 and December 2018) is the sole worldwide top-tier tennis tour for men organized by the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) founded in 1990 that replaced the earlier dual Grand Prix ...
singles title in his career and reached the final in
Scottsdale in 2002 (losing to
Andre Agassi
Andre Kirk Agassi ( ; born April 29, 1970) is an American former professional tennis player. He was ranked as the List of ATP number 1 ranked singles players, world No. 1 in men's singles by the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) for 101 ...
) and the semifinals in
2000 Heineken Open
The 2000 Heineken Open was a men's ATP tennis tournament held in Auckland, New Zealand. The event was part of the International Series of the 2000 ATP Tour and was played on outdoor hard courts. It was the 33rd edition of the tournament and was ...
losing to
Michael Chang
Michael Te-pei Chang (born February 22, 1972) is an American former professional tennis player and coach. He was ranked world No. 2 by the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) in 1996. Chang is the youngest man in history to win a singl ...
.
Balcells was born in
Barcelona
Barcelona ( ; ; ) is a city on the northeastern coast of Spain. It is the capital and largest city of the autonomous community of Catalonia, as well as the second-most populous municipality of Spain. With a population of 1.6 million within c ...
, and played for the
Spanish Davis Cup team in
2000
2000 was designated as the International Year for the Culture of Peace and the World Mathematics, Mathematical Year.
Popular culture holds the year 2000 as the first year of the 21st century and the 3rd millennium, because of a tende ...
, winning the doubles rubber (with
Àlex Corretja
Alejandro Corretja Verdegay (; born 11 April 1974) is a Spanish former professional tennis player. He was ranked world No. 2 in men's singles by the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) in 1999. Corretja won 17 ATP Tour singles titles, incl ...
) in the final against
Australia
Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country comprising mainland Australia, the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania and list of islands of Australia, numerous smaller isl ...
. He retired in 2004. Ballcells was considered unusual for a Spanish player, as he possessed a serve and volley game that involved regularly rushing the net. This was not very common in Spanish tennis by the 1990s and early 2000s.
ATP career finals
Singles: 2 (1 title, 1 runner-up)
Doubles: 2 (2 runners-up)
ATP Challenger and ITF Futures finals
Singles: 2 (0–2)
Doubles: 12 (6–6)
Performance timelines
Singles
Doubles
Top 10 wins
External links
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1975 births
Living people
Spanish male tennis players
Tennis players from Barcelona
Long stubs with short prose
{{Spain-tennis-bio-stub