Rafa
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But I wasn’t smelling victory. Not at all. This was Federer, and against him there was no relaxation possible. What was more, I knew that the 6–4 score had been unjust. He had played better than me overall in the set. He could play at the same level, or not as well, and win the next one. I might have beaten him mentally; but he’d beat me if I mentally let up. I looked up and saw the sky darkening. It looked like rain. The match might have to be postponed till Monday. Whatever came, I’d deal with it. The scoreboard said I was two sets to love up; but in my mind it was still 0–0.
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The Clan
Sebastián Nadal came in for much teasing from his family over the jacket he wore to watch his son play Federer in the 2008 Wimbledon final. It wasn’t his jacket, he complained; he didn’t have one before the match began, he asked Benito Pérez, his son’s press chief, to see if he could come up with something, and the best Benito was able to come up with was a dark blue jacket with vertical silver stripes that, along with the dark sunglasses, made him look, somewhat discordantly in the strawberries-and-cream setting of the Centre Court, like a third-rate Sicilian mafia boss. That was how his brothers described him, at any rate, and it was an impression the justice of which he himself struggled to dispute.
There was a sense in which the gangster look was not entirely inappropriate. There is something Sicilian about the closeness of the Nadal family circle. They live on a Mediterranean island, and more than a family, they are a clan—the Corleones, or the Sopranos, without the malice, or the guns. They communicate in a dialect only the islanders speak; they are blindly loyal to one another, and they conduct all business within the family, be it the terms of Miguel Ángel’s contract with Barcelona Football Club, the glass enterprise Sebastián runs, or the real estate deals in which they have all profitably dabbled.
Take the five-storey building the family bought in the very heart of Manacor, next to the ancient church of Our Lady of Dolours whose tall spire dominates the town’s skyline. When Rafael was between ten and twenty-one years old, all the Nadals—the grandparents, the four brothers, and the sister, plus their spouses and their gradually mushrooming offspring—lived in the same apartment block, one on top of the other, the front doors often open by day and by night, converting the building into one great big family mansion.
In Porto Cristo, the seaside resort eight kilometers away from Manacor, they had a similar setup. On the ground floor, the grandparents; on the first floor, Sebastián’s family; on the second, Nadal’s godmother, Marilén; on the third, Uncle Rafael. Then, across the road, Toni, and a little way down the street, Miguel Ángel.
Rafa’s grandparents were the masterminds behind an arrangement that is not entirely unusual in a society as intensely familial as Mallorca, where it is still not unusual for sons and daughters to remain living with their parents well into their thirties.
“Keeping everybody together was a task that my wife and I set ourselves,” says Don Rafael Nadal, the musical grandfather. “We did not have to struggle too hard to convince my children to make the effort to acquire the building. I’ve mentally conditioned them all since they were very small to keep everything inside the family.”
That was why, when Miguel Ángel signed up as a professional footballer, there was no question of anyone other than his big brother Sebastián acting as his agent, and doing so for free. It would not have occurred to Sebastián to ask for a cut of his brother’s winnings. If you live by the Nadal family code, Sebastián explained, you just don’t do that. What three of the brothers—Sebastián, Miguel Ángel, Toni—and Rafa have done is set up a company called Nadal Invest that has put money into real estate. As far as Rafa’s multiple sponsorship deals with Spanish and international companies, initially Sebastián oversaw them himself, principally the first deals with Nike. The person on whom the important decisions ultimately rest is Sebastián, who has taken over where his own father, Don Rafael, left off as family patriarch: definer of the values, keeper of the rules.
“I’d lose anything, I’d give up anything—money, property, cars, anything—rather than fight with my family,” Sebastián says. “It is inconceivable for us to have a bust-up. We never have and we never will. Seriously. No joke. Family loyalty is our first and last rule. It comes before anything. My best and closest friends are my family, then come the rest. Family unity is the pillar of our lives.”
It is, because the principle is taken to such extremes that they shun what would otherwise be the entirely natural impulse to congratulate Rafa when he wins. Marilén, the godmother, did try it once, and immediately Toni and Rafa’s response was to look at her incredulously and say, “What are you doing?” “They were right,” Marilén says. “It was as if I were congratulating myself. Because if one of us wins, we all win.”
* * *
CHAPTER 4
HUMMINGBIRD
Easing up was not an option. Two sets to love up and one set away from winning Wimbledon, people watching might have felt I was within easy reach of my life’s dream. But I intended to allow no such thoughts into my head. I would take each point as it came, in isolation. I’d forget everything else, obliterate the future and the past, exist only in the moment.
Federer winning the first game of the set to love, serving and firing winning drives with the purpose of a man who was not remotely ready to give up the battle, if anything, actually helped my concentration, reminded me that being ahead meant nothing; winning over the long haul was all. I began preparing myself for what suddenly seemed like it might be a very long haul indeed. Partly because the sky was darkening again, threatening rain, but mainly because Federer continued playing the way he had begun, making a high percentage of winners, holding his serve easily, forcing break point after break point on mine, making me battle hard to stop him running away with the set.
People ask me sometimes whether I feel I’ve spoiled Federer’s party, whether my appearance on the tennis scene might have prevented him from setting more records. To which my answer is “How about looking at it another way? How about it’s me whose party he’s spoiled?” Had he not been around, maybe I could have been world number one three years in a row by 2008, instead of watching and waiting all that time as number two. The truth probably is that had one of us not been around, the other would have triumphed more. But it’s also true that the rivalry has benefitted us both in terms of our international profiles—among other things resulting in more interest from sponsors—because it’s made the game of tennis more appealing to more people. When it’s a procession, as we say in Spain, when one player wins time after time, it’s good for the player but not necessarily good for the game. And I think that, in the end, what is good for the game has to be good for the two of us. There’s an excitement generated among the fans when we are about to meet, usually in finals because of our number one and two seedings, that touches us too. We’ve played so many games against each other, so many of them incredibly close and exciting, and crucial in our careers, because often they’ve been Grand Slam finals. If I’ve had an edge in matches won—and I led by 11–6 before the Wimbledon 2008 final—it’s because we’ve played a number of our matches on clay, where I do have the upper hand; but if you look at the other surfaces we’ve played on, you’ll see that the results are more even.
All this is not to say that there aren’t plenty of other good players out there more than capable of beating us both, and who do beat us both. I’m thinking of Djokovic—especially Djokovic—but also Murray, Soderling, Del Potro, Berdych, Verdasco, David Ferrer, Davydenko . . . But the record since I became number two in 2006 shows that Federer and I have dominated the big tournaments, playing against each other in many of the big finals. This has meant, and I think we both sense it, that our rivalry has been acquiring an ever-greater magic in people’s minds. The expectation our matches generate brings out the best in me. Whenever I play against Federer, I have the feeling that I have to play at the very limit of my capacities, that I have to be perfect, and that I ha
ve to stay perfect for a long time in order to win. As for him, I think he attacks more against me, plays more aggressively, goes for winners on his drives and volleys more than he does with other players, obliging him to take more risks and to be at 100 percent in order to win.
Whether he’s made me a better player, or I him, it’s hard for me to say. Toni has never ceased to remind me—and I know he is right—that Federer is more technically gifted than I am, but he does so not to cause me despondency, but because he knows saying so will motivate me to sharpen my game. I watch Federer playing on video sometimes, and I’ll be amazed at how good he is; surprised that I have been able to beat him. Toni and I watch a lot of tennis videos, especially of my games, both ones that I’ve won and ones that I’ve lost. Everybody tries to take lessons from defeat, but I try to take them from my victories too. You have to remember that often in tennis you win by only the finest of margins, that there is an element of mathematical unfairness built into the game. It’s not like basketball, where the winner is always the one who has accumulated the most points. In tennis the outcome often turns less on being the better player overall than on winning points at critical times. That’s why tennis is such a psychological sport. It’s also a reason why you should never allow victory to go to your head. At the moment of triumph, yes, drink in the euphoria. But later on, when you watch a match you’ve won, you often realize—sometimes with a shudder—how very close you came to losing. And then you have to analyze why: was it because I lost concentration or was it because there are facets of my game I have to improve, or both?
Another thing about watching my matches again closely, dispassionately, is that in appreciating and respecting the skill of my opponents, watching them hit wonderful winners, I learn to accept losing points against them with more serene resignation. Some players rage and despair when they are aced, or when they are the victims of a magnificent passing shot. That is the path to self-destruction. And it is crazy, because it means you believe yourself to be capable, in some kind of ideal tennis world, of subduing your opponent’s game from start to finish. If you give your opponent more credit, if you accept that he played a shot you could do nothing about, if you play the part of the spectator for a moment and generously acknowledge a magnificent piece of play, there you win balance and inner calm. You take the pressure off yourself. In your head, you applaud; visibly, you shrug; and you move on to the next point, aware not that the tennis gods are ranged against you or that you are having a miserable day, but that there is every possibility next time that it will be you who hits the unplayable winner.
In the end, you have to understand that the difference in ability between the top players is marginal, practically nothing, and that the matches between us are decided in a handful of points. When I say, and when Toni says, that a large part of the reason why I have been successful is my humility, I don’t mean it in a sappy, PR-savvy sort of way, or because I am trying to make out that I am a well-balanced, morally superior sort of individual. Understanding the importance of humility is to understand the importance of being in a state of maximum concentration at the crucial stages of a game, knowing that you are not going to go out and win on God-given talent alone. I am not very comfortable talking about myself in comparison to other players, but I do think that maybe in the mental department I have developed something of an edge. That is not to say that I am not afraid, that I don’t have my doubts as to how things will go at the start of each year. I do—precisely because I know that there is so little difference between one player and another. But I do think I have a capacity to accept difficulties and overcome them that is superior to many of my rivals’.
Maybe that is why I like golf so much, because it’s a game that also plays to the discipline I’ve acquired in tennis to stay calm under pressure. You need a base of talent, obviously, and lots of practice, but what’s decisive in golf is not letting one bad shot affect the rest of your game. If there is one sportsman that I admire outside the game of tennis, it is Tiger Woods. When he is at his best, I see in him what I would like to be myself. I like that winning look he has when he plays, and I like most of all his attitude, his way of facing up to the moments of crisis when a game is won or lost. He might hit a bad shot and get angry with himself, but the next time he squares up to hit the ball, he is back in focus. He almost always does what he has to do when the pressure is on, he almost never makes the wrong decision. Evidence of that is the fact that he has never lost a tournament when he has gone out at the top of the leader board in the last round. To be able to do that you have to be very good, but that alone is not enough. You have to be able to judge when to take a risk and when to hold back; you have to be able to accept your mistakes, seize the opportunities that come your way, when to opt for one type of shot, when for another. I’ve never had an idol in any sport, not even in football. When I was a child, I did have a special admiration for my fellow Mallorcan Carlos Moyá, but never the blind admiration of the doting fan. It’s not in my nature, in my culture, or in the way I’ve been brought up. But the closest I have come to an idol is definitely Tiger Woods. It’s not his swing, so much, or even the way he strikes the ball. It’s his clearheadedness, his determination, his attitude. I love it.
He is an example and an inspiration for me in my tennis game, and my golf game too. Excessively so in golf, according to my friends, who think I take the game way too seriously. The difference is that they play for fun and I find it impossible to play any game without giving 100 percent. This means that when I go out on the golf course with my friends, as when I go out on court to face Federer, everyday human feelings are put on hold. I have a phrase I use before a game to set the boundary between our enmity on the course and our affection off it. I look hard at my golfing pals and say, “Hostile match, right?” I know they laugh at me behind my back about this, but I am not going to change. I am decidedly unfriendly during a golf game, from the first hole to the last.
It’s true that you don’t need the same intensity of concentration as in tennis, where, if your mind wanders for three or four minutes, you can lose three or four games. In golf you have more than three or four minutes between shots. In tennis you have a split second to decide whether to go for a winning drive, a defensive slice, or rush to the net for a volley. In golf you can take thirty seconds over the ball, if you wish, to prepare yourself for a shot. Which means there’s plenty of time to joke and chat about other things during a round. But that’s not the way I play the game, even with my uncles, even with my friend Toméu Salva, much less with my sister’s boyfriend, who is a scratch player. I take my cue from Tiger Woods. From start to finish, I barely say a word to my rivals; I certainly don’t compliment them on a good shot. They complain, they get angry with me, curse me for my rudeness. They say I’m more aggressive even than I am on the tennis court, that on court I’ve been known to smile, but on the golf course I never do, until the game is over. The difference between me and my friends, some of whom are much better golfers than I am (I have a handicap of 11), is that I just don’t see the point of playing a sport unless you’re giving it your all.
The same goes for training, which has caused me problems sometimes when the players I’ve chosen for practice during tournaments say that I train too hard, too soon, that I don’t give them a chance to warm up and they are tired out in ten minutes. It’s been a common complaint all along my career. But I haven’t sold my soul to tennis. The effort I invest is great, but I don’t consider it a sacrifice. It’s true that I’ve trained every day practically since the age of six and that I make big demands of myself. And meanwhile my friends are out partying or sleeping late. But I haven’t felt this to be a sacrifice or a loss because I’ve always enjoyed it. That is not to say that there haven’t been times when I’d have liked to do something else—such as stay in bed after a late night out instead of training. As I say, though, I do have late nights. Very late nights, as is the way in Mallorca, especially in summer. I barely touch alcohol, but I do go out dan
cing with my friends and sometimes stay up till six in the morning. I might have missed out on some things other young men have, but I felt, on balance, that I’ve made a good trade-off.
Some players are monks, but I’m not. That’s not my understanding of how to live life. Tennis is my passion, but I also think of it as my work, as a job that I try to do as honestly and well as if I were working in my father’s glass business or in my grandfather’s furniture store. And, like any job, however large the financial rewards might be, there’s a lot of grind. Of course, I am incredibly fortunate to be one of those few people in the world who has a job that he enjoys, and who on top of that is paid extraordinarily well for what he does. I never, ever lose sight of that. But it does remain, in the end, work. That’s how I conceive of it. Otherwise, I wouldn’t train as hard as I do, with the same seriousness, intensity, and concentration as when I am playing a match. Training is not fun. When my family or friends come along to watch me practicing with Toni or with a fellow professional they know, I am in no mood for jokes or smiles; they know to keep quiet, as quiet as the Wimbledon crowds when I am playing a practice point.