“Rafa! What plan do you have this summer with the boat, where do you plan to sail?”
Rafael Nadal looked at his interlocutor and, with some anger, somewhat offended, responded: “But what are you saying to me? I’m a professional tennis player, I don’t have time to go on a trip“.
The dialogue took place in the weeks when uncertainty was well established and the idea that Nadal was irrevocably saying goodbye to tennis prevailed. Which is also what a good part of his surroundings made him see carefully: Isn’t that enough, Rafa?
And it is quite true that It was Nadal himself who spoke in 2023 about retiring in 2024but Spanish statements must always be given a second reading, and, above all, not overlook the taglines, the phrases he adds when he thinks he has already said everything.
What’s more: Nadal was very clear on May 18, 2023, when he announced that he would not play again for the rest of the year to prepare for a full-fledged farewell in 2024. Because once she said that, he added: “You never know what can happen, I can’t predict the future, who knows what I will do if I recover physically and feel better.” Or, in her words that day: “I want to end the way I want to end. I don’t want to leave early, it’s always worth making an extra effort, it has always been my philosophy“.
“If he comes back and wins, he won’t say goodbye to tennis”
Juan Monaco Extensionist
That is why on April 15, 2024 we published in CLAY and Relevo that Nadal dreamed of much more than his last Roland Garros: “Be amazed, yes. Although you shouldn’t, because Nadal is being more Nadal than ever. Enjoy what it seems impossible, because he feels that he can change the course of things and make it possible.
And that is also why on May 12 we published in CLAY and Relevo that Nadal was closer to continuing playing in 2025 than to retiring in 2024: “If you sharpen your vision a little and analyze what happened in the last twelve months, “Things become much simpler: Nadal is closer to making the decision to continue playing in 2025 than to saying goodbye in 2024.”
The one seen this Saturday in the Roland Garros press room is an authentic swimthat hypercompetitive Nadal with eternal ambition that people like his uncle Toni and his friend Juan Mónaco know very well.
“He is going to set the limit. I know him a lot, and I think that if he prepares to return, he prepares to win, he does not prepare to make the quarterfinals. If he comes back and wins he won’t say goodbye of tennis,” Monaco said in an interview that CLAY y Relevo published on June 28, 2023. “I think it’s a bit like that. Yes,” Toni Nadal certified in an interview with CLAY and Relevo published on July 10, 2023. This Saturday, May 25, 2024, Nadal agreed with everyone.
Rafael Nadal
Roland Garros
2024-05-26 05:25:27
#Nadal #prophecy #tennis #boat #Relief
