On March 20, 2011, when the Indian Wells final marks the hour and 35 minutes, Rafael Nadal He misses a fairly simple right hand – for him, of course – that stays in the net. It is a complicated moment, because despite having won the first set 6-4, he is now down 5-3 in the second and the one who serves is Novak Djokovic. As soon as you see the ball it doesn’t go over the net, The Balearic, very angry, hits his knee with his racket.
Controlling emotions such as anger and rage is one of the issues that Nadal has handled best throughout his career. It reminds him of some fights with the referees, yes, but One of the records he is most proud of is that he has never, ever broken a racket.. That anger in the Indian Wells final is one of the few times that he has had a reaction that was out of character for what the Nadalian canons.
There is a video on YouTube called “Rafa Nadal Racket Smash Compilation”, whose translation would be “Compilation of Rafa Nadal breaking rackets”, which lasts almost two minutes. When clicking, one hopes to see to the champion of 22 Grand Slams smashing rackets against the ground. But nothing could be further from the truth: what appears is anger, yes, but no broken racket.
“You haven’t broken many rackets in competition. Do you know what the total is?” he was once asked during an interview with CBS. “Yes, I know,” Nadal responded while making the zero gesture with his left hand. ” Have you never broken a racket?” the interviewer asked again. “No, no. My family wouldn’t have allowed me to break a racket. For me, breaking a racket would mean that I am not in control of my emotions.“.
Indeed, There is not a single photograph or video in which Nadal appears breaking a racket. There are hardly any tennis players who can say something like that. Novak Djokovic, for example, has starred in more than one and more than two episodes of this type. Even Roger Federer, who remained in the collective imagination as the perfect tennis player, broke – and many – rackets.
‘When I started working with him I told him that he had to respect a rule.’If you throw your racket and break it, I will no longer be your coach. There are millions of children in the world who don’t have rackets because they can’t afford them.“, Toni Nadal once revealed, the man who shaped the legend from the first day he started hitting balls. “That’s what I told Rafa when he was six years old and I’ve never seen him throw one. That It would be a lack of respect for the people who really have to buy equipment to practice this sport“.
The legend of Buenos Aires 2005
However, there is an urban legend on the subject of broken rackets that has haunted Nadal since 2011, when Gastón Gaudio said in an interview that he had seen the Spaniard break not one, but seven racketsone, two, three, four, five, six and seven, after a defeat in the Buenos Aires tournament in 2005.
Roland Garros champion in 2004 – the last edition before the Nadal dynasty -, Gaudio had defeated the Spaniard in a very strange match played on the central court of the Buenos Aires Tennis Lawn. The result was 0-6, 6-0 and 6-1 for Gaudio, who qualified for the semifinals of the tournament. Years later, in December 2011, the Argentine dusted off that episode.
“When he lost to me here in Buenos Aires we got to the locker room and he was, I don’t know, 17 years old (actually he was 18), it was little need, and I had just won Roland Garros. He came to the locker room and broke all the rackets he had in his bag. All seven. I looked at him and thought: ‘What’s wrong with this kid, idiot? Are you crazy?‘”, noted Gaudio in an interview with the newspaper The Nation.
“He didn’t lose against anyone. I more or less played on clay and had won Roland Garros. I said ‘Wow, that’s crazy.’ The kid felt like he was a failure and lost in the quarterfinals in Buenos Aires. From then on he never stopped winning. How he took the defeat, it wasn’t that he said ‘Well, I lost against someone who won Roland Garros, on clay, in Buenos Aires, normal enough…’ He couldn’t stand it“.
Gaudio never retracted those words. Nadal, of course, didn’t feel good at all. “I have never broken a racket in my life. I think Gastón is wrong. Bah, lie!” Nadal responded during the 2013 Masters Cup. “I didn’t even end up angry, I just felt that a very good player had passed me by. I don’t even carry that many rackets, six at most! And if I don’t break a racket on the court, that’s when you’re at your worst… If you lose a game, much less in the locker room.“.
