Rafa

by Rafael Nadal

  “I did like to feel in the beginning that I was helping a boy to achieve his dream and I felt motivated by the idea of being a mirror in which he might see himself,” says Moyá, who admits that before long it was Nadal who would be motivating him. “I could see, by the sheer intensity with which he trained, that he was super-ambitious and desperate to improve. He hit every shot as if his life depended on it. I’ve never seen anything like it, not even close. You compared him with other kids his age and, well, it was exactly what you see now that he has become one of the greats of the tennis circuit. Sure, at that age you never know what’s going to happen. The world is full of sportsmen and -women who looked like world beaters at the age of fourteen and, for whatever circumstances of life or hidden weaknesses of character, sank without a trace. What was certain about Rafa was that he had something different.”

  And he had an audacity that belied his self-effacing demeanor off court. “He began playing the Futures tournaments, the junior competitions of the ATP, at fifteen,” said Moyá, “playing at times against players ten years older than he was. I worried at first that for a boy accustomed to winning, the inevitability of losing—and losing often—would sap his confidence. That was the danger. One more time, I underestimated him. Within five months he started winning games; within eight or nine, tournaments.”

  Moyá is amazed at the speed with which Nadal “burned through” the normal stages of tennis evolution. “When I was fifteen, I played summer tournaments in Mallorca and went to school in winter. That was my limit. If I’d started playing Futures matches then, I’d have lost 6–0, 6–0 every time. As it was, I started at seventeen and that was what happened.

  “After a year, when he was sixteen, he moved up from the Futures to the Challengers competition, one step below the full-on ATP circuit. At first it was tough for him. He was playing on indoor hard courts, the fastest surface there is—a million miles removed, in tennis terms, from the clay courts in the humid, hot environment where he was raised. Typically we Spanish perform badly on those courts, and at first he suffered too. In fact, Spanish players often don’t even bother to turn up, because they know from experience that the chances are they’ll be out in the first round.

  “The first time we’d played a competitive match against one another he was sixteen and I was twenty-six. It was in Hamburg, a big ATP Masters tournament, early in 2003. In the many practice games we’d had over the previous couple of years I almost always won. I’d say, in fact, that if I really wanted to win, I always did. Not surprisingly. But on this occasion I was nervous. I felt incredibly pressured. I was in the top ten, he was a kid, an emerging star, sure, but ranked 300 or so. Losing would be an embarrassment, and I felt that pressure keenly.

  “It was a night game, it was cold. I felt the cold but he seemed not to; he seemed to be hot before we’d even played the first point. Actually, he didn’t play at his best. And nor did I. But he beat me, in two sets. It was as clear-cut a case as you’ll find of a player winning through superior mental strength. You’d see other kids of sixteen on the circuit who were not as good as he was but with a far more chaotic attitude on court, raging away at the slightest setback. What I saw across the net from me that day was a player who was very talented indeed but, above all, one whose concentration, professionalism, focus were on another level from mine. Someone whose weak game was ten times stronger than any equivalent player’s weak game. And—I say this just to show how remarkable this was—don’t forget that by now I’d won a Grand Slam and had been a finalist at the Australian Open.

  “At the end of the match we hugged at the net and he said, ‘I’m sorry.’ He needn’t have said it. I took the loss more philosophically than I might have expected beforehand. I knew that this was going to be the first of many defeats; that Rafa was the future and I, while far from finished, was beginning my descent.”

  As the years went by, and one rose and the other fell, Moyá became increasingly aware of the intimidating effect Nadal had on other players. “I don’t think he would ever admit it, and I’ve never asked him about it, but I do believe that he does deliberately intimidate rivals,” Moyá says. “He is more complex and vulnerable in private than he lets on in public, but the effect he has on his rivals is not complex at all. They are daunted by him. Those rituals he has: they’re a show in themselves. You don’t see any other player do anything like it. And as for his physical preparation, he goes out on court practically sweating, something I never managed to do, but it is the ideal condition in which to start a match.”

  Carlos Costa, Rafa’s agent and also a former pro, agrees with Moyá that there is something scary about coming up against Nadal, describing his impact on his rivals, like the impact Tiger Woods at his best had on the rest of the professional golf world, as that of the dominant alpha male over the rest of the pack. “Towards the end of my career I played against him competitively,” Costa says, “and, yes, there came a point in a match when fear entered your heart. You knew you were in the presence of a born winner. Rafael is stronger mentally than everybody else; he’s made of special stuff.”

  He also has a special charisma. Moyá, a big star in his day, had been Spain’s first ever world number one, but long before Nadal himself even made it to number two, the younger man had outstripped him in popular appeal, in his own country and beyond. Moyá was more classically good-looking (in May 1999 People magazine put him in its list of “the 50 most beautiful people in the world”), but he could not match Nadal’s elemental appeal; Moyá was a more elegant player, with a more powerful serve, but Nadal’s ferocious competitiveness had more seductive force. He connected with the public in a way that Moyá never could.

  Moyá calmly accepts this because he knows he is not, nor ever was, in the same league as Nadal. Not in terms of talent, but in terms of attitude. “It’s Rafa’s head that distinguishes him from the rest. That comes through on court, not just for his rival but also for people watching on TV. It’s invisible but you feel it. His backhand, his forehand: others have that. Of course he is talented. I think he doesn’t realize himself how much, because he has a tendency to underestimate himself. But in terms of mentality, he is out of this world. I’ve known many top athletes, not just in tennis, and nobody has what he has—with the exception maybe of Tiger Woods or Michael Jordan. He is an assassin on the crucial points; his concentration is absolute, and he has something I never had, an ambition without limits. I won one Grand Slam, I was happy: my life’s work was done. Rafa needs to win more and more and he’ll never have enough.

  “He has the same hunger in each point. I was 5–0 up in a set: my mind would wander; I gave away a game, two. Rafa, never. He gives nothing away for free; he conveys to his rivals the crushing, disheartening message that he is going to do all he can to beat you 6-love, 6-love.”

  Yet that is not, for Moyá, the whole story, which he says is more layered and complex. Nadal does have a flaw. And one connected in Moyá’s mind with that ambiguity between his sensitive, insecure private self and the sporting battering ram the world sees. In Moyá’s view, Nadal does not entirely shed his Clark Kent persona on court; the transformation to Superman, willed as it is and convincing as it looks, is not complete. “He is more cautious than you might think on court. He has always been wary of his second serve, and that is why he does not hit his first as hard he could, given how powerful his physique is. You see the same caution in his open play. I’ve trained with him a thousand times on court, and I’m always struck when I see him play a match by how much more aggressive he is in training, how many more winners he hits. I’ve said to him many times, ‘Why don’t you loosen up more? Why not play more inside the court and go on the attack more, at least in the early rounds of tournaments, when you often come up against players you could beat with your eyes shut?’ But he doesn’t, or does so less often than he should. Maybe in part because of that refusal of his to believe how good he really is.”

  Moyá believes that Nadal’s warrior image comes not so mu
ch from his attacking aggression as from his never-say-die defensiveness. He plays with the spirit of the Alamo, a sensation that transmits itself to the crowds, to whom he conveys the impression, no matter his standing in the world rankings, that he is playing the part of the defiant underdog. As Moyá says, Federer would never be seen as a gladiatorial figure because he is not a battler, a scrambler; he is not fighting for his life as Nadal always seems to be doing. Federer’s trademark is his lethal precision.

  That Nadal has proved such a resilient champion has all the more merit, in Moyá’s eyes, for the anxieties he has had to overcome to get there. It also helps account for his magnetic on-court persona. People connect more with the battling underdog than with the effortlessly superior performer, because the battling underdog is more recognizably human; more people see themselves in the flawed Nadal than in the Olympian Federer. They would do so less if he were more like the past master with whom he is sometimes compared, Björn Borg; or if he were as wildly exuberant on court as John McEnroe was. For Moyá, Nadal is a cross between the two players who staged the greatest rivalry tennis had seen until Nadal and Federer came along. Borg was pure ice, McEnroe was all fire. “The secret of the tremendous appeal he has worldwide,” says Moyá, “is that you can see he is as passionate as McEnroe was, but he has the self-control of Borg, the cold-blooded killer. To be both in one is a contradiction, and that’s what Rafa is.”

  * * *

  Photo Section 1

  Me as a baby, offering a glimpse of an obsession to come.

  Me as a toddler, cooling off under the Mallorcan sun.

  In the uniform of Real Madrid, the football team of my life.

  I get an early taste of another of my life’s pleasures: boating.

  Me with my uncle Miguel Ángel Nadal, the professional soccer player.

  In costume . . .

  Me with pals, all coached by my uncle Toni.

  Reflecting on the game.

  With Boris Becker and friends.

  Me and tennis-playing Goofy.

  Doing speed and agility training in Manacor, age sixteen. (© Joan Forcades)

  (This page and next two photos) Tests and training in the gym in Mallorca. (© Joan Forcades)

  Me with the French Open trophy in Paris, 2008, with, from left to right, at back: my father, my mother, Rafael “Titín” Maymó. Front: Benito Pérez Barbadillo, Jordi “Tuts” Robert. (© Jordi Robert)

  Titín, Tuts, me, Carlos Costa, and Toni at the gardens of Versailles Palace (left to right) before the French Open, 2008. (© Jordi Robert)

  Tuts, Titín, me (left to right) at a Japanese restaurant in Melbourne during the Australian Open, 2009. (© Jordi Robert)

  Titín, Tuts, Carlos Costa, me, my father, Toni (left to right) in Melbourne, Australia, 2009. (© Jordi Robert)

  My father, Benito Pérez, Tuts, Carlos Costa, me, my sister, my mother (left to right). With the trophy certifying my number one world ranking in 2010. (© Jordi Robert)

  Me with my girlfriend, María Francisca Perelló, at the official dinner celebrating my Wimbledon victory in 2010. (Bob Martin/AELTC)

  At the house my team rents in Wimbledon, June 2010. Benito Pérez, Titín, Tuts, me. (© Jordi Robert)

  In Acapulco in 2005, en route to winning my first Grand Slam, the French Open. Me, Joan Forcades, Carlos Moyá (then in world top ten). (© Joan Forcades)

  CHAPTER 5

  FEAR OF WINNING

  Winning Wimbledon was an enticing enough prospect in itself, but I also knew that victory here would mean I’d soon be taking over as world number one for the first time. Defeat would mean me remaining at his shoulder, maybe condemned never to overtake him. But in this match I was in the lead, and I served at the start of the fourth set feeling as composed as one might reasonably hope to in such circumstances. Which is not very much, but at least my legs were not trembling and the adrenaline was still winning the battle against the nerves. Losing the third set on a tiebreak had been a blow, but that was history now. I knew he couldn’t keep on delivering aces on every service game as he had done in the third set. I’d rated my chances before the match at fifty-fifty, and that hadn’t changed.

  There had been a time, after all, when I had rated my chances at scarcely above zero against him, and won. It was our very first encounter, on a fast court in Miami in March 2004. I was seventeen and he, aged twenty-two, had just made it to number one in the world rankings, but I beat him in straight sets. A year later we met in the final of the same tournament, and this time he won, but it was mighty close. I won the first two sets; he won the third on a tiebreak, and then he took the final two sets. It was a defeat, but an encouraging defeat. I was thirty places below Federer in the rankings but had gone toe to toe with him right to the end. After that, my career took off like a rocket: by the time the French Open came around, two and a half months later, I had climbed to world number five.

  Immediately after Miami, I played in the tournament that marks the start of the clay court season, Monte Carlo. I love Monte Carlo, both the place and the tournament. It’s on the Mediterranean and near home. The courts you play on hang high over the sea, so high I almost imagine I can see Mallorca from there. And the streets are so clean. What stays with me about the city is how impeccably ordered and tidy everything is. The tournament itself is one of my favorites, not just because I do well there and historically it has a special meaning for me, but because it has tradition, like Wimbledon. They’ve been playing it for more than a hundred years and many of the great names in the game have won there, such as Björn Borg, Ivan Lendl, Mats Wilander, and Ilie Nastase, as well as early greats of the Spanish game like Manuel Santana and Andrés Gimeno. My friend Carlos Moyá too.

  I hadn’t played in Monte Carlo the year before because of my foot injury, but I felt here was my chance, on the surface I’d grown up with, to win my first big ATP tournament. I’d let Miami slip, but I felt I wasn’t going to let this one go. Not even if I came up against Federer again. I didn’t, because he went out in the quarter finals and it was the defending champion, Guillermo Coria, from Argentina, who I played in the final.

  Clay courts suit people with a defensive game. They also suit people who are fit. Tennis is a game that requires the speed of a sprinter, sharp off the blocks, and the stamina of a marathon runner. You stop, start, stop, start. And you keep doing it over two, three, four, sometimes as much as five hours. Games on clay last longer because rallies last longer, because the ball bounces higher and stays in the air longer, meaning it is harder to finish off points, and harder to hold on to your serve. The endurance factor weighs more heavily on the result than it does on other surfaces. The angles are wider, so you have to cover more ground. It’s more geometrical, as my physical trainer, Joan Forcades, puts it. You have to build up a point gradually and wait longer than on the faster surfaces to push your opponent out of position, until the moment comes when you can realistically think of attempting an unplayable winner. And it’s a game too in which you need to have a skill that is unusual in a game played with a ball: skating, I call it. You’re taught in tennis to balance your weight solidly on the ground, positioning your feet and body in a certain way, in order to strike a shot effectively, but in a high percentage of shots on clay the soft, gritty surface becomes momentarily transformed into a skating rink, as you slide to reach the ball, and all the usual rules go out of the window. If you haven’t played on clay from an early age, it is tough to master this skill. I had, having learned the game on clay, and because I was fast and fit and never gave up a ball for lost, this was a surface on which I knew that, once I had reached a certain point of physical and mental maturity, I was going to be hard to beat.

  I won my first ever ATP tournament in Monte Carlo, beating Coria in the final—an odd match in which I won in four sets but lost the third 6–0—and then I went on a long unbeaten streak on clay, winning in Barcelona and Rome. Next up after Rome was the French Open in Paris, at Roland Garros, the climax of the clay court season, the
first Grand Slam of the year. I was number five in the rankings but, still a little short of my nineteenth birthday, the favorite to win.

  I hadn’t played here the year before because of my injury, but I had flown up to watch the tournament for a couple of days. It had been the idea of Carlos Costa and my friend Tuts, my handler at Nike, who had organized the trip. Carlos thought it would be good for me to become familiar with the setting, at ease with it, because he thought this was a tournament I’d win one day. But I wasn’t so much overawed as frustrated by my visit to the grand theater of French tennis. I hated not playing. I felt almost ill watching games involving people who I knew I had it in me to beat. Carlos still remembers me telling him, “Next year this one’s mine.” The greatest dream had always been Wimbledon, but I knew that a mountain I’d have to climb first would be Roland Garros. If I couldn’t win in France, I’d never win in England.