Impressive charge of dynamite from Roger Federer in his farewell letter to Rafa Nadal: “All those rituals. Gather your water bottles together like they were toy soldiers in formation, fix your hair, adjust your underwear. All this with maximum intensity. Secretly, I loved the whole thing. Because it was so unique, so you.” Federer touches on one of those little things that we consider part of the landscape several steps below match points, victories and trophies: that is, things that we are going to miss because we already take them for granted because they are so routine. What was the guy on the other side of the net thinking? What did the rival think with whom Nadal has made one of the most impressive journeys in the history of sport, a journey of almost 20 years that began with the Spaniard going out on the court (“I had heard about you”) in Miami? in your red sleeveless t-shirt, showing off those biceps,” and which ended with the two of them in London sitting next to each other, crying holding hands? What was Federer thinking in the middle of the match, with his heart rate skyrocketing, when at the change of court Nadal was ordering his bottles and before serving he pulled at his underwear, put his hair behind his ear, blew on his hand and took it away to the forehead? He told it in that letter. He secretly loved it: he recognized in those small manias, in those great superstitions, the essence of Nadal. Don’t you end up loving, really loving, the guy who has forced you to be a better tennis player, to train more hours, to win more titles than, surely, you wouldn’t have if you didn’t have your nemesis pressing you on the courts? Yes, one thinks that time or absence is going to kill them, as Serrat sang, but those little things that Federer noticed are the same ones with which we really kick someone out: one misses the one who leaves, not so much his virtues, common in others, like his harmless, sometimes detestable manias, which make him unique and leave, when they disappear, a hole that is impossible to fill.
