Joan Manel Balcells Fornaguera (born 20 June 1975) is a retired professional

tennis Tennis is a racket sport that is played either individually against a single opponent ( singles) or between two teams of two players each ( doubles). Each player uses a tennis racket that is strung with cord to strike a hollow rubber ball ...

player from Spain. He won one

ATP Tour The ATP Tour is a worldwide top-tier tennis tour for men organized by the Association of Tennis Professionals. The second-tier tour is the ATP Challenger Tour and the third-tier is the ITF Men's World Tennis Tour. The equivalent women's organis ...

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 world No. 1 tennis player. He is an eight-time major champion and an Olympic gold medalist, as well as a runner-up in seven other majors. Agassi is the second of five men to ac ...

) and the semifinals in 2000 Heineken Open losing to

Michael Chang Michael Te-pei Chang (born February 22, 1972) is an American former professional tennis player and coach. He is the youngest man in history to win a singles major, winning the 1989 French Open at 17 years and 109 days old. Chang won a total of ...

. Balcells was born in

Barcelona Barcelona ( , , ) is a city on the coast of northeastern 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 ci ...

, and played for the

Spain Davis Cup team The Spain men's national tennis team has represented Spain internationally since 1920. Organised by the Real Federación Española de Tenis (RFET), it is one of the 50 members of International Tennis Federation's European association (Tennis Europ ...

2000 File:2000 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: Protests against Bush v. Gore after the 2000 United States presidential election; Heads of state meet for the Millennium Summit; The International Space Station in its infant form as seen from ...

, winning the doubles rubber (with

Àlex Corretja Àlex Corretja i Verdegay (; born 11 April 1974) is a Spanish former professional tennis player. During his career, he was twice a major runner-up at the French Open (in 1998 and 2001), won the Tour Finals in 1998, reached a career-high single ...

) in the final against

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, sma ...

. He retired in 2004. Ballcells was considered a strange player for being a Spanish player because Ballcells always go up to the net, his game was based on serve and volley. This was not very common on 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

* * * 1975 births Living people Tennis players from Catalonia Spanish male tennis players Tennis players from Barcelona {{Spain-tennis-bio-stub