Rafael Nadal: The man who taught us how to love clay
RAFA: My Story, coach “Uncle Toni" tells co-author John Carlin about what he says to his nephew on days when his body won’t stop hurting. “I say to him, ‘Look, you’ve got two roads to choose from: tell yourself you’ve had enough and we leave, or be prepared to suffer and keep going’." Nadal leaves nothing except other men in ruins. And even those up there in tennis’ rarefied air, who know pain, who’ve endured themselves, who live this ascetic life, they can’t fully comprehend it.
“He doesn’t go away one point," says Ginepri in 2014. Three years later in Paris, Roberto Bautista Agut, a 6-1, 6-2, 6-2 victim, says, “He yields nothing". It’s unclear if they’re telling us or asking themselves how this can be.
Nadal made grinding gratifying, he made clay joyous as he slithered around his backhand with a street dancer’s fast feet and attacked with a forehand which uncoiled like an irritated snake. Huhhh, he went. Jesus, we said.
He played Federer and Djokovic 14 times in Paris and lost twice. He played 98 matches across his 14 winning years and lost only 23 sets. Through four separate campaigns—2008, 2010, 2017, 2020—he didn’t give up a single set.
Once, in 2008, he won nine 6-1 sets and three 6-0. Who owned an arena like this? Who on a particular piece of athletic ground was so impossible to budge? He went so far that you needed to hurdle sports and cross continents to find a comparison. In 1994, in 27 seconds, involving nine pairs of hands, the French scored a winning rugby union try against the All Blacks with four minutes remaining at Eden Park in Auckland.
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