In November 1995, at the age of 19, Moyá won his first tournament at the top-level in
Buenos Aires, defeating
Félix Mantilla in the final. In May 1996, Moyá defeated the clay-court champion
Thomas Muster, in the semifinals of the tournament in
Munich, ending Muster's streak of winning 38 matches in a row on clay-courts. It was the fourth time in four weeks that Moyá had played a match against Muster. In the final of
Munich,
Sláva Doseděl defeated Moyá. In 1997, Moyá reached his first
Grand Slam final at the Australian Open, defeating
defending champion Boris Becker in the first round,
Jonas Björkman in the fourth round, At the US Open, Moyá withdrew in the second round with a back injury and only played in two tournaments for the rest of the year. Despite being hampered with a stress fracture in his lower back from the 1999 US Open through the early part of 2000, Moyá still finished in the top 50 in the world for the fifth straight year. He reached the fourth round of the 2000 US Open, where he held a match point in the fourth set, but eventually lost to
Todd Martin in five sets. Moyá's best result for the rest of 2000 was winning at the
Portugal Open final over his countryman
Francisco Clavet. In 2001, Moyá won the title at
Umag. He also finished runner-up at
Barcelona, where he lost in a four-hour marathon final to countryman
Juan Carlos Ferrero. 2002 saw Moyá win four titles from six finals. He captured his second career Tennis Masters Series title, and the biggest hard-court title of his career, at
Cincinnati, where he defeated world No. 1,
Lleyton Hewitt, in the final. Moyá captured three clay-court titles in 2003. He also helped Spain reach the final of the
Davis Cup, compiling a 6–0 singles record. In the semifinals, he won the deciding rubber against
Gastón Gaudio as Spain beat
Argentina, 3–2. He beat
Mark Philippoussis on grass in the final. But that proved to be Spain's only point, as they lost the final 1–4 to Australia. In 2004, Moyá helped Spain go one better and win the Davis Cup. In the final, he won two critical singles rubbers against
Andy Roddick and
Mardy Fish, as Spain beat the United States 3–2. The year also saw Moyà capture his third career Masters Series title at
Rome, where he defeated
David Nalbandian in the final. He was the only player on the tour to win at least 20 matches on both clay courts and hardcourts that year. In July 2004, Moyá's kind-hearted gesture to hit with
ball boy Sandeep Ponniah at the 2004 Tennis Masters Series Toronto event captured audiences during an injury timeout against opponent
Nicolas Kiefer of Germany. To the crowd's surprise, Ponniah shuffled Moyá across the baseline and received an ovation for an overhead smash on a Moyá lob. Moyá won his 18th career title in January 2005 at
Chennai. He donated his prize money for the win to the
2004 Indian Ocean Earthquake and Tsunami victims. In January 2007, Moyá was the runner-up at the
Sydney International, losing to defending champion
James Blake. In May 2007, at the Hamburg Masters, he defeated
Mardy Fish, world No. 12
Tomáš Berdych, world No. 9 Blake, and world No. 6
Novak Djokovic, a run which saw him reach his first Masters semifinal since 2004 Indian Wells, where he lost to
Roger Federer. Moyá lost against
Rafael Nadal in straight sets in the quarterfinals of the
2007 French Open. During
Wimbledon, Moyá lost in the first round to
Tim Henman in a five-set thriller, the fifth set stretching to 24 games (Henman won 13–11). Despite the loss, Moyá had no points to defend (he had not played a grass-court match in a few years), resulting in his moving to world No. 20, his first time inside the top 20 since 13 June 2005. In July 2007, Moyá won the
Croatia Open in
Umag, defeating
Andrei Pavel. The win brought him to world No. 18 in the rankings, his highest rank since 23 May 2005, when he was world No. 15. In 2007 at Cincinnati, he reached the quarter-finals, where he lost to
Lleyton Hewitt. In 2008 at the Cincinnati Masters, Moyá defeated
Nikolay Davydenko, the match being played over the course of two days because of rain. Hours after his match with Davydenko, Moyá beat
Igor Andreev. Moyá made a slow start in 2009. He failed to progress beyond the second round of his first four tournaments, including a first-round loss at the Australian Open. In March 2009, he announced that he would have an indefinite hiatus from tennis to recover from injured
tendons and
ischium in his
hip. He returned to professional tennis in January 2010, losing against
Janko Tipsarević in the first round of the Chennai Open, then losing in the first round of the
2010 Australian Open to
Illya Marchenko. On 17 November 2010, he announced his retirement from tennis owing to a long-standing foot injury from which he failed to recover.{{cite news|url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/tennis/atptour/8141007/Carlos-Moya-retires-due-to-foot-injury.html|title=Carlos Moya retires due to foot injury He has won ATP Tour singles titles in eleven countries: Argentina, Croatia, France, Italy, India, Mexico, Monaco, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, and the United States. ==Major finals==