Rafael Nadal believes his hopes of a fifth successive French Open title could be compromised by playing in Madrid's 500 metre altitude this week.

But that only applies to the Spanish men. The women reached their peak more than a decade ago, when Arantxa Sánchez Vicario and Conchita Martínez were regularly challenging for and winning significant titles.

There has been no sign of a genuine successor, and it has been nine years since a Spanish woman reached the singles semifinals of a Grand Slam.

It is a surprising state of affairs. Spanish sports are still on a roll, from Nadal to the national men’s soccer team to the National Basketball Association star Pau Gasol. Although women’s participation in sports continues to lag behind that of men in Spain, the gap is narrowing, as evidenced by the rise in the number of Spanish women Olympians.

Tennis, with Nadal producing the biggest bang, is in the midst of a boom, and Nadal himself is the logical, formidable extension of a long line of outstanding Spanish men’s players, including Carlos Moya, who also reached No. 1 in the world after learning the game on the Mediterranean island of Majorca.

But Sánchez and Martínez — and the attention they drew to women’s tennis in Spain — did not set the table for another women’s champion. At least not yet. “We are giving it all we have,” said Carla Suárez Navarro, 20, who is Spain’s most promising women’s player since the big two.

She bears a resemblance to both. Like Sánchez, Suárez is short and sturdy and reliant on the speed in her legs to counter the power of her taller opponents. Like Martínez, Suárez has a stylish one-handed backhand that came naturally.

“Her backhand is her best shot; it reminds me a bit of Justine Henin’s,” said Sánchez, while taking a break this week from caring for her 2-month-old daughter, Arantxa. “She’s not tall, but she’s very talented. For me, she is the only younger women’s player in Spain who can really achieve quite a bit more. She needs more consistency, but we’ll see how far she can get. So far, she’s the only one who looks like she might have it what it takes. I wish I could see more names.”

With Henin, the Belgian star now retired, the 23rd-ranked Suárez and the 21st-ranked Amélie Mauresmo of France are the only players in the top 40 who use a one-hander. It allows Suárez to produce the sort of shifts in rhythm and spin — including quality drop shots — that are all too rare in the upper reaches of the women’s game in this power-hungry era.

“Whenever I finish a match, people always come up to me and talk to me about my backhand and even thank me for my backhand,” Suárez said. “My first coach, Alfonso Pérez, had a one-handed backhand, and so did his sister. And they taught me that way, and since I had the strength to do it, I guess they never tried to change it.”

Like Nadal, Suárez grew up on a Spanish island, but her home was considerably farther south. She was born and raised in the Canary Islands, in the city of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, where her mother was a physical education teacher whose areas of expertise did not include tennis.

“Neither my mother nor my father played,” she said. “Nobody in my family played. I guess it was meant to be for me.”

Suárez felt obliged to leave for the mainland at age 18 for an academy in Barcelona, the Spanish tennis capital. It is a move that many Spanish women’s players have hesitated to make in a society that remains family-oriented, which is one of the reasons Spanish coaches give for the gap between the men’s and women’s professional games.

“At home, I was always playing with the same people and to travel was always more complicated; it was an extra flight each time,” Suárez said.

Suárez is not the first prominent women’s player from Las Palmas. Magui Serna peaked at No. 16 in the world in 2004, and Marta Marrero reached the quarterfinals at the French Open in 2000. But both Serna and Marrero struggled with their fitness and faded from prominence.

Suárez, who started to play at age 9 in school, eventually chose tennis over basketball, her other childhood sporting love. Those who have seen her dribble a soccer ball, including her coach, Xavier Budo, confirm that she has ample talent for that game, as well.

Such athleticism is necessary, considering that Suárez — at 1.62 meters, or 5-foot-4 — is one of the shortest players in the top 100. Small wonder she has spent considerable time studying Henin, the greatest recent player of unimposing height.

Suárez compensated beautifully in January, as she ambushed Venus Williams in the second round of the Australian Open in a true upset that required her to produce plenty of world-class defensive play and acute angles with her backhand. She then advanced to the quarterfinals.

That was a reminder that the 2008 French Open was no fluke. There, Suárez advanced through qualifying to make her first Grand Slam appearance and then upset Mauresmo and the tough Italian base-liner Flavia Pennetta with Sánchez cheering her on from the stands en route to the quarterfinals.

But in the months that followed, she struggled with her nerves and consistency, losing early at Wimbledon, the Beijing Olympics and the U.S. Open. She has improved her hard-court results this year and is comfortable on quicker surfaces because she grew up training half the day on hard courts and half the day on clay. But clay remains her favorite workplace, and she is delighted that the most significant women’s tournament in her country is now played on clay in Madrid.

“This tournament is terrific, because it’s going to help all of us get better known in Spain and give us the chance to play at home in front of our public,” Suárez said.

That should increase the chances of Sánchez and Martínez finding a true successor. Unless, of course, Suárez manages to get the job done first.