Extract from the book ‘Thank you, the legacy of Rafael Nadal’ (Ediciones B, 2023) by Sebastián Fest
Someone once told me the following: «No one has ever played tennis like Nadal and no one will ever play like that again. What’s more, I shouldn’t do it, because you can’t play like that. I don’t know what you mean. Nadal’s drive is very special…No, it’s not true. When he trains, Rafael hits him very well. What happens is that when he plays he gets scared and tends to go up because he knows that this way he gives the ball a little more spin. And no one, ever, hit the drive like Steffi Graf, who always hit late, and yet he won I don’t know how many Grand Slams. Everyone has a way of hitting the ball, there are many people who hit it in a complicated way and more or less do it well.“When he plays he gets scared” is probably one of the most disruptive statements he has ever made. Toni Nadal about his nephew’s tennis. A scared Nadal seems like a tennis oxymoron, but the guy and former coach has reasons to say it. He has reasons, but that doesn’t take away one bit of impact from what he says. So does this mean that Nadal played a good part of his career scared?
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Toni Nadal unlocks his mobile phone and searches his WhatsApp messages for a video. In it you can see points from the final of the 2003 Aix-en-Provence challenger, which pitted Nadal against the Argentine Mariano Puerta.
«It’s just that you pick up a habit, and when you pick up the habit… I teach this many times to the kids here at the academy. Did you see where the drive ended? And the serve was better… Sixteen years old. At sixteen years old he hit it pretty well.
That final in the French challenger was won by Puerta 3-6, 7-6 (8-6) and 6-4, the Argentine’s only victory over Nadal, although it does not count for the official ATP face-to-face, which shows a 4-0 in favor of Nadal. Among those matches, the 2005 Roland Garros final, the
Rafa’s first big success.
The more Toni Nadal talks, the more amazing what he says. The “when he was sixteen he hit it quite well” sounds like he later hit the drive worse, his most powerful weapon, precisely that shot that drove tennis crazy, because it was something never seen before. And yes, that’s what he says. “Rafael enters the circuit very soon…”, he slips in as a justification.
Translated: Rafael Nadal was very young and opted for something conservative for fear of losing. The pragmatic nephew prevailed over the uncle and lyrical coach.
That first Roland Garros final, the one Nadal beat Puerta, did he win it playing much further back than the one in Aix-en-Provence? Yes, yes… Because he felt the responsibility? If you watch the whole match of the French challenger, you will see Rafael hitting it well. The whole game. Because I was an exaggerator of hitting the ball very well, making the complete movement, for a matter of aesthetics and common sense and logic. If I pull that way, his arm goes there! But his trademark is different! Of course, of course! It’s another because then he starts playing with older people regularly and… damn! He starts to hit her a little late. And he starts to lift the ball with more spin, to give himself more time… and he wins! And since he is doing very well, he continues. And since he is doing very well, I don’t tell him anything. I tell him: “No, no, keep going, keep going.” Was your goal for Nadal to hit the ball with the complete movement, with that elegance, then a mistake? Well, I don’t know, that’s how it went well for him and that it’s reality. You see the sixteen-year-old Nadal and you say: “Damn, how this guy hits it, looking for the drive, going to look for it forward, playing above the line.” Do we agree that that type of more conservative game that he adopted generated more wear and tear? Yes, of course. And then that affected his physique. I just don’t know. I don’t know. Wouldn’t it be logical to think so? David Ferrer suffered a lot and his physique was not affected. He hit flatter than your nephew David Ferrer… Rafael’s physical problem comes from his foot problem, which is lifelong.The conversation had reached a dead end. If the style of playing four meters behind the baseline, which is what Nadal developed in the first years of his career, caused him more wear and tear, then it clearly affected his physique. In any case, the foot injury was not the cause, but the consequence. The logical thing would be to think that the physical problem did not come from the problem in the foot, but that the problem in the foot came from the physical problem in all its dimensions: that of a young man who demanded from his body what none of his rivals perhaps never asked him, and that he was successful with that bet, although he spent five years in dry dock.
The situation had reached a limit that is difficult to imagine in June 2022. On the mobile phone of Feliciano Lopez and other players landed a photo: that of Nadal’s foot.
The reaction was one of disbelief bordering on horror. How can Rafael Nadal play (and win!) in those conditions? It was a photo of the left foot, that foot affected by Müller-Weiss syndrome, which causes the bone to lose life. It is a necrosis of the bone, the bone dies. Those who saw the photo were scared by the state of the instep.
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2023-12-01 20:47:46
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