Rafa
Page 7
Success might have gone to my head in Barcelona; it never would with Toni or my family around, all of whom conspired to keep me grounded—Maribel, my younger sister, included. I remember a little incident involving her at a junior tournament in Tarbes, France, called Les Petits As (The Little Aces), when I was fourteen. It’s considered to be the world championship for kids of that age. The crowds are big, people believing they will get a first look at some of the stars of the future. I won that year, and in my first taste of what was to come, girls my age or older started coming up to me to ask for my signature. My parents, seeing this, were amused but also slightly alarmed. So my father got Maribel, who was nine, to join the queue of girls and, when she reached me, to ask me in the most fawning, sickly sweet way, “Mr. Nadal, please can I have your autograph?” My parents, watching from a distance, laughed approvingly. Others might have been terribly impressed by me, but never my family.
That same year I went on a trip to South Africa, the farthest by far I’d ever been from home. After winning a series of tournaments in Spain sponsored by Nike, I qualified to go to a grand final in South Africa, the Nike Junior Tour International, where the winners of all the other countries gathered to compete. Toni wasn’t too sure I should go. As usual, he didn’t want me to get ideas above myself. But, in terms of preparing me for the wandering life of a professional tennis player, he did see the merits of me playing in a distant land against some of the best foreign players my age. While Toni hemmed and hawed (he has strong opinions on things but struggles to make decisions even more than I do), my father had no doubts. He phoned another coach I sometimes worked with in Palma, Jofre Porta, and asked him if he’d go with me to South Africa. Jofre said yes, and that same evening we set off, via Madrid, on an overnight flight to Johannesburg. Toni gave the impression of not being too pleased, but a part of him would have been relieved, given that he has a phobia of planes, to have been saved twelve hours in the air.
I remember that tournament less as a tennis player than as an excited child on his first trip to Africa. It was played in Sun City, an amazingly extravagant complex in the heart of the African bush, where there were giant swimming pools and cascades and even an artificial beach and, nearby, lions and elephants. It was a thrill to be near these wild animals—but not too near. We were taken to a place where we could hold and stroke some white lion pups, but I didn’t touch one myself. I’m not comfortable with animals, not even with dogs. I doubt their intentions. But I remember South Africa as a thrilling trip, in which I also happened to win a tennis tournament. Evidence of how childlike I remained, how unprofessional still for all the hours of hard practice I put in, and for all Toni’s cajoling, was provided on the morning of the final, two hours of which I spent playing football. The organizers were scandalized, as if their tournament was not being taken seriously enough, and they appealed to Jofre to stop me playing. He didn’t. Knowing he was reflecting the views of my parents, he reminded them that if traveling halfway across the world to play in a tournament wasn’t fun, the point would come when I’d lose my enthusiasm for tennis.
I found out after my return home from South Africa that my godmother had arranged a party at my grandparents’ to celebrate my victory. She’d even hung up a banner. But I never got to see it. Toni, having got wind of what was afoot, snatched the banner angrily off the wall, and took it away. Even though the words my godmother had written on the banner were intended in a jokey, almost teasing spirit—celebrating and deflating at the same time—Toni didn’t see the funny side of it at all. He intercepted me at the door of my grandparents’ home and said to me, “You can go home now. I’ll come along after I’ve given your godmother and grandparents a talking to.” I don’t know exactly what he said to them, but the gist of it, as my godmother reported later, was this: “Are you crazy? What are you trying to do to Rafael? You’ll ruin him. Don’t give what he does so much importance!”
Toni did not stop there. He came round to my house later that night and said, “OK, we can’t waste time. I’ll meet you downstairs at nine tomorrow and we’ll drive to Palma for training.” Flabbergasted, stunned into rebellion, I replied: “Toni, do you understand what you’re asking me to do?” And he replied, “What am I asking? Simply that you be downstairs at nine ready to train. I’ll wait for you. Don’t make me come upstairs.” I was indignant, that familiar feeling again that I was being treated unjustly. “Are you serious? If so, you’re nuts. Do you think it’s fair,” I continued, “that after a flight of fourteen or fifteen hours you shouldn’t let me off one, just one, training session?” He said, “I’ll see you at nine, then.” I replied, “Well, I won’t be there.” But I was there. Unhappy, grumpy, in a filthy mood, at nine o’clock sharp.
He was right, and, for all my outrage, I knew deep down he was right too. Once more, his purpose had been to avoid any prospect of me “believing” my successes, thinking they were worthy either of celebration or special dispensations from training. My parents are more festive than Toni, not such party poopers, but on this occasion they agreed with his approach. My mother’s reaction when an uncle or an aunt congratulated me on a victory was invariably the same: “Come on. It’s not such a big deal.”
My mother put her energy and encouragement into the areas where I was less strong, such as my school studies. It was on this account that my parents, having shielded me from Barcelona, decided when I turned fifteen that I should do as my father, and Toni, had done and go to a boarding school in Palma. Called the Balearic Sports School, it was tailored to my needs—regular school lessons but plenty of tennis built in—and it was only an hour’s drive from home. But I was miserable there. My parents—my mother in particular—were concerned that all this tennis was killing my studies. My concern was that the studies were going to kill my tennis. They killed my chances of playing at the Wimbledon Junior Tournament and the one at Roland Garros too. “But these tournaments are so important!” I complained to my mother. To which she replied, “Yes, I’m certain of it, but I assure you that you’ll have another chance to play in those competitions; but if you abandon your studies, you most definitely will not have another chance to pass your exams.”
The sports boarding school seemed to my parents to be the best bet for me to accomplish both goals. I don’t want to say it was a big mistake on their part, because I did pass my exams. But it turned out to be a terrible year. I didn’t need or want anything to change in my life. I was happy with what I had. And suddenly I was terribly homesick, missing my parents, my sister, the family meals with my uncles and grandparents, the football games on TV at night—missing those, that was a killer—and home food. And the timetable was brutal. We got up at seven thirty, had classes from eight to eleven, then tennis for two and a half hours, then we ate. Then it was classes again from three to six in the evening, and from six to eight tennis and physical training. And then from nine to eleven at night we had to study again. It was too much. I wasn’t doing either thing I had to do well, my studies or my tennis. The only good thing I remember of that experience was that I was so exhausted at the end of the day that I slept well. The other saving grace was that I went home for weekends and that, yes, I got the qualifications I needed to bring my schooling to a satisfactory end.
My mother wanted me to carry on studying and take the exams necessary to get into university. So she signed me up when I was sixteen to a long distance course, but I lost all my books, left them on a plane on a flight to the Canary Islands, and that was the end of my formal education. I don’t think I left those books behind deliberately; it was just another case of me being absentminded in all things other than tennis. And I don’t regret having given up the chance to go to university, because I don’t have regrets, period. I’m curious about the world; I like to inform myself about what’s going on, and I think I’ve learned more than enough things about life in recent years that university could never teach.
The funny thing is that at boarding school I followed in the footsteps of Toni, wh
o also missed home terribly. My father, on the other hand, never felt that way. He has always played the cards that life deals him. I don’t have the overall solidity of character that he has, nor does Toni, but I do apply the endurance principle in my tennis. Toni provided the theory, my father the practice; Toni taught me to endure, my father gave me an example to imitate.
His personality is the polar opposite of Toni’s. Toni is a big talker, a philosopher; my father is a listener and a pragmatist. Toni has opinions, my father makes decisions, always with a clear head. Toni is unpredictable; my father is even-tempered. Toni can be unfair; my father is just. And he is the doer in the family. Toni’s project has been me, and he’s done his job impeccably. But my father, two years older than Toni, has started one business after another from scratch; he’s single-minded about his objectives, but he’s made his family his first responsibility. He’s very honest, jealous not to dishonor the family name. He’s employed dozens of people in his various businesses and created the conditions for us to live well and for Toni to dedicate himself to me.
One thing would not have happened without the other. Toni has never received any money from me or from anyone in the family for the lifelong attention he’s dedicated to me, but he’s been able to do it because he owns half of my father’s business, and takes half the profits, without doing any of the work. It’s been a fair exchange because I would never have had anything like the same hours of coaching from Toni if my father had not worked with such purpose all his life.
What defines my father in his work is that he faces problems, finds solutions, gets the job done. And there I think is where I take after him, more than after Toni. Toni is my tennis coach and my life coach too. His medium is words: he urges me on, berates me, gives me advice, teaches me. But that is where his work ends and mine begins. The one who has to put his words into action is me. My godmother says my father is by nature a winner and that on court I have his character. I think that’s true. I’m the fighter in my ring, as my father is in his.
Yet, in terms of the public, he is the one in the shadows. As he enjoys saying, “I’ve been the son of Rafael Nadal, the brother of Miguel Ángel Nadal, the father of Rafael Nadal—never myself, alone.” Others might respond to this circumstance with envy, or barely concealed bitterness. My father genuinely delights in it. His father was a celebrity in Manacor because of his musical prowess; his brother was a celebrated football player; his son is a celebrated tennis player. This has meant that my father, at different stages of his life, had to introduce himself, or be introduced, as the son/brother/father of another Nadal. Or if he says, “Hello, I’m Sebastián Nadal,” the response has invariably been “Oh, the son/brother/father of . . . ?” Ever since my father can remember there’s been at least one item a week in the local media about a Nadal, but never about him. But it’s never bothered him, because he genuinely has no interest in being known or recognized, much less feted. He is happy simply for it to be understood by the rest of us that he has tried to be a pillar for the family and, in recent years, for me in particular.
It was my father the businessman who understood early on in my career that we should create a professional team around me. In addition to Toni, we hooked up with Joan Forcades, my physical trainer; Rafael “Titín” Maymó, my physical therapist; Ángel Cotorro, my doctor; Benito Pérez Barbadillo to deal with media communications; and as my agent, Carlos Costa, who works for IMG, a sports marketing company very well plugged into the tennis world. On business matters related to my tennis career, my father said that, contrary to his usual instincts, he thought it wise for us to receive input from people outside the family. I told him I trusted him entirely but if he felt more comfortable working with people who might add a more objective point of view, that was fine by me. So he teamed up with some tried and trusted associates that he has worked with, and who I myself have known since I was a child. The truth is, though, that the business aspect of things is not something I worry about very much. Toni, always the conservative, wasn’t keen on expanding things beyond the small family nucleus, but it was my father who said, no, if we are going to aim for the top, we have to recognize our limitations and get some good pros to work with us. My father is the strategic brain of our team but he is not above taking care of minor matters too, when others are not available to help, such as finding a couple of Wimbledon tickets for a sponsor or sorting out transportation from a hotel to a club where a tournament is taking place. With big things and little things that arise, it’s my dad who brings the order and calm and good humor that I need to function at peak focus on the tennis court.
This is not to diminish in any way the role Toni has played in my life. For all the clashes we’ve had, he’s my uncle and I love him. But the principal driving force in my life has been my father, who, along with my mother, created a happy and stable home base without which I would not be the tennis player I am. Maybe it was not the best thing for her, but she practically abandoned her own self—leaving behind a perfume shop she owned—and sacrificed everything for us, for my sister, my father, and me. She is a social person by nature, who loves to learn and see new things, but her life became confined to the family after I was born. She did it because she wanted to, because she never had any doubts this was what she had to do. I sometimes think she made too many personal sacrifices for us. But if her objective was that we should have the space and love necessary to thrive, it worked. While my father was out managing his businesses, she was the one who shaped our values, who took charge of my education and my sister’s, who helped us with our homework, who fed us and was with us every day, always available to us for anything. To underestimate the value of her role in everything that has come my way, to see her importance as less than Toni’s, for example, would be as blind as it would be unjust. As she sometimes says, “Would you like to see written all over the place that someone else raised your child?”
Yet, as I tell my mother, it suits me right now to have him occupying a central role in my tennis life. It is in my best interests. He gives me something without which my game would suffer. And I think that my mother, reluctantly at times, understands that.
I can never repay my parents for what they have given me, but the best thing I can do for them is try and remain faithful to the values they’ve instilled in me, try to be “good people,” because I know that nothing would hurt them more or make them feel more betrayed than if I were not. If, in addition, I can give them the fun and joy and satisfaction of winning a big tournament, like Wimbledon, that is a thrilling bonus. Because a victory for me is a victory for all of us. I know it and they do too.
That thought would not have been uppermost in my mind after going 4–1 down to Federer in the second set of the final at Wimbledon, but if I had the conviction that this was a mountain I could still climb, a lot of it had to do with the stability my family had given me and the example they had set.
Nonetheless, the situation was far from ideal. Here I was before the Wimbledon champion of champions, and Federer was playing tennis as well as he ever had. I was being outplayed. From the outside it must have looked as if Federer was suddenly looking majestically comfortable in his Centre Court kingdom. An observer might have imagined I was thinking, “Oh my God! I’m letting this slip. It’s going to be 2007 all over again.” But no. I was thinking, “He cannot sustain this level either in this set or the next three or four sets. I still feel good. The sensations are there. Just stick to your game plan and you’ll be back.” And never, ever give up a point.
And I started to win. Sooner than I expected or, for that matter, entirely deserved. I won my serve and was then lucky to break his. That was a setback for him. He took it badly, lost his concentration, left that zone of brilliance he had entered, and I broke him again. He was hitting loose shots, usually due to finding himself in awkward positions after trying to twist around the barrage of balls I kept aiming at his backhand, gifting me points where before he was winning them with seeming ease. He was beginning to fee
l uncomfortable again, to feel the pressure, and his face showed it. He shouted too, a couple of times, in furious irritation. This was not Roger’s style at all. But at that point I was cooler outside than he was, and probably inside too. Not that I had really upped my own game. I played some poor shots myself, missed some winners I should have put away fairly simply. I’m not poker-faced at these moments. I do let out yelps of frustration, or close my eyes in despair, as anybody who has watched me play knows. But as soon as I take up my position for the next point, the frustration is gone, forgotten, erased, and what counts, all that exists, is the moment.
I was 5–4 up and serving. He won the first point, then I hit a good first serve straight to his body, to which he had no answer. Fifteen all. Then I won the next point with a drive deep on his forehead corner, very similar to the shot with which I had won the first point of the match. But he came back and it was thirty all. A big point. And then, as I was bouncing the ball up and down on the grass, just about to wind up my body to serve, the umpire cut in. “Time violation: warning, Mr. Nadal.” I had apparently spent too long between points, gone over the legal limit of twenty seconds before I served—a rule that is enforced only rarely. But it’s a dangerous rule. Because once you’ve received that first warning, any subsequent violations lead to the deduction of points. My concentration had been put to the test. I could have made a scene. The crowd, I could tell, shared my indignation. But I knew, without having to give it a second thought, that to let my feelings show would do me no good. I’d risk losing that precious asset, my concentration. Besides, the momentum was with me and I was two points away from winning the second set. I put the umpire’s interruption immediately out of my mind and won the point with a terrific and, for me, very unusual shot. A backhand slice, cross-court, that defeated his lunge at the net. That was especially satisfying. Not just because of the importance of the point but because I like to believe that, however many tournaments I win, I keep improving my game, and the backhand slice was an element of my game I’d been working on strengthening for some time. It’s not a shot all that many players choose to have in their repertoire because the game is so relentlessly fast nowadays, but I believe it gives me an edge, another option, allowing me to change the rhythm of the game, ask new questions of my opponent. But this particular shot exceeded all my expectations. Normally the sliced backhand is a defensive shot; the one I had just pulled out of the hat had been one of the best winners of my life. And it gave me set point. He came right back, leveling the score at deuce, but I was feeling at the top of my game now, capable of anything. The game did go to two more deuces and he had three break points in all, but finally he surrendered the game and the set with a hesitant backhand into the net. It was an unforced error, at a decisive moment, in a match that would be marked by an extraordinarily high percentage of winners. I was up 6–4, 6–4. One more set and I’d be Wimbledon champion.