Rafa

by Rafael Nadal

  The score was 8–7 and I had match point on my serve. I did exactly what I had to do, served wide to his backhand. He hit it back short, mid-court, and, here, right here, was the very first moment in my entire life in which, approaching to hit the ball, before I’d made impact, I was filled with the euphoric sensation that victory was mine. I drove a forehand to his backhand corner and rushed the net, believing he was going to miss it or hit a weak reply that I’d easily put away. He didn’t. He whistled a sensational backhand down the line and I didn’t get close to it. I’ve replayed that point in my head many, many times. I have the tape of it in my head.

  What might I have done differently? I could have hit the ball harder and deeper, or I could have hit it to his forehand side. But I don’t think, even now, that hitting it to his forehand would have been the right thing to do. Here’s why: if I’d hit it there and he’d passed me, or he’d got the ball back and I’d missed, I’d have been devastated. Because I’d have deviated from my plan to aim always at his backhand; I’d have known immediately that I had made the wrong choice. That would have affected me very badly mentally. As it was, I made the right choice, even if the execution had not been as effective as it might have been. It wasn’t a bad shot, though. Often enough he’d have failed on that return. To be fair to myself, he did hit a really fantastic shot, and at a moment of unbelievable pressure for him. On the previous point I had hit my best shot of the match, and he had responded immediately with his best. Only later, when it was all over, was I able to reflect that it was because of moments like these, when the drama was at its highest, that this Wimbledon final had been so special.

  That winner gave him a high. He ran me ragged on the next point, hitting with furious confidence, and won it with a cross-court forehand I couldn’t touch. He served for the set at 9–8 in the tiebreak, hitting his first ball long, prompting a large part of the crowd to respond with a very unusual “Aaah!” of disappointment. The crowd didn’t want the match to end. They wanted a fifth set. And that was what they got. I hit my return long on his second serve, and now it really was back to square one. Two sets all—for all practical purposes, love-all in the match.

  * * *

  Mallorcans

  It was no surprise when Sebastián Nadal and his wife, Ana María, rejected the apparently inviting offer their son received during his teens to take up a tennis scholarship in Barcelona. And it was even less of a surprise that he should have responded to his parents’ decision with relief. The island exercises a powerful pull over Rafa Nadal: he always misses home when he is away competing in international tournaments; he always rushes back at the earliest possible opportunity, by the fastest available means.

  It says much about his competitive grit, and something about the gap between his sporting and his private personas, that he only feels fully himself when he is at home. Nadal the tennis player triumphs on tennis courts everywhere; outside Mallorca, Nadal the man is like a fish out of water.

  The reasons why have to do with the strong sense of identity that characterizes the islanders, but also with the fact that Mallorca is the one place in the world where he can feel normal, where the nature of the inhabitants is such that they relate to him as he thinks people should: not on account of what he has achieved, but by virtue of who he is.

  The Nadals take pride in the belief that they define, and are defined by, Mallorcan culture, nowhere more manifestly so than in the diamond-hard tightness of their family ties, the foundation on which Rafa’s drive and mental resilience are built. The strength of the family bond in Mallorca is unusual even in the context of a country as rooted in Catholic tradition as Spain. Another characteristic of the Spanish is their loyalty and sense of belonging to the town or village of their forebears. But in this instance, too, the Mallorcans take things a step further, all the more so in the case of the Nadals, who keep their closest relationships within their home town of Manacor, the island’s third biggest town.

  Sebastián and Ana María were born and raised there, as were their parents, and their parents’ parents; so too were Rafa and his girlfriend of more than five years, María Francisca. So intimately does Rafa identify with his birthplace that it is hard to imagine him having a relationship with a woman from anywhere else. His natural habitat is Manacor, and for him to be sentimentally involved with someone from Miami or Monte Carlo would seem almost as unnatural as the crossing of two different species.

  Rafa’s extended family, stretching three generations, all live in Manacor or in the town’s satellite beach resort of Porto Cristo. And Rafa’s closest male friends are almost all Manacor natives too, not least among them Rafael Maymó, his physical therapist. Two intimates from out of town, Carlos Moyá and his physical trainer Joan Forcades, were born close by in Palma, the capital of Mallorca.

  As for the presence of two Catalans, Carlos Costa and Jordi Robert, on Nadal’s globe-trotting professional team, that has an explanation too. For Mallorcans there are two classes of “foreigners”: Catalans and the rest. The proximity of language and geography (the Catalan capital of Barcelona is barely half an hour away by plane) grants the Catalans the status of first cousins. Benito Pérez Barbadillo, who is Spanish but from Andalucía, is valued and viewed affectionately within Nadal’s team, but he operates by different codes, is decidedly extroverted—as Andalucians tend to be—and is thus regarded, from an amused and mildly perplexed distance, as the odd one out.

  The impulse Mallorcans have to stick together has encouraged the view among visitors from the rest of Spain that the islanders are a deeply “mistrustful” people. A quick look at the history of the island helps explains why such a perception might not be off the mark. Mallorca, a tiny speck on the map of Europe, has been a target for foreign invaders and occupiers for at least two thousand years. First it was the Romans, then the Vandals, then the Moors, then the Spanish and, in a tourism boom that started fifty years ago, British and German visitors—“barbarians from the north,” in local parlance—many of whom have stayed and colonized the more picturesque parts of the island. (The permanent population of Mallorca stands at around 800,000; a parallel world of 12 million tourists passes through the island each year.)

  All along, and in between, pirates have plundered Mallorca’s coasts. Which might account for why it was apparently not uncommon halfway through the last century to come across Mallorcan country folk who had never thought to venture near the sea—or who had never even seen it—or who would ask, “What’s bigger, Mallorca, or beyond Mallorca?” Their longstanding response to coexisting with foreign occupiers has been a quiet, prudent passivity.

  Sebastián Nadal, who does not dispute this impression, urges outsiders keen to understand the culture of his birthplace to read a little book, popular on the island among natives and visitors alike, called Dear Mallorcans. Its pages reinforce, if anything, the notions held by other Spaniards of the islanders, describing them as “phlegmatic” and “always ready to listen but not always to speak.” That corresponds to the character of Sebastián Nadal and his son; but it does not mesh with the talkative Toni, which maybe helps account for the perception within his family that he is something of a misfit.

  Yet if Rafa Nadal has conquered the tennis world and become a name known on every continent, it is because in some important respects he, like Toni, has defied the stereotypes that define the islanders. “In Mallorca, people seek success more in the pleasure of living than in work and they have a concept of time tied more to leisurely enjoyment than to the material results of effort,” Dear Mallorcans informs us. In his unusual embrace of the Protestant work ethic, Rafa Nadal has more in common with the recent German colonizers than with the ancestral natives of Mallorca. Carlos Moyá, also from Mallorca and also a tennis champion, but by his own admission an infinitely less ambitious one than Nadal, makes the point that the lust to triumph both Rafa and Toni exhibit bears no relation to a Mallorcan character he describes as “relaxed, almost Caribbean.”

  Beyond tennis, on the
other hand, Rafa Nadal does share what the island bible describes as the Mallorcans’ peculiarly lackadaisical attitude toward time. He is not punctual by nature, and if he is enjoying himself with his friends back home, he will not think twice about staying up clubbing until five in the morning. The difference between him and his friends is that, breaking with island convention, he will then unfailingly wake up four hours later and go to the tennis court to train. When the sport to which he has dedicated his life makes its call, he ceases to be a hedonist son of the Mediterranean and becomes a model of disciplined self-denial.

  His fellow Mallorcans respect him for the deviant path he has chosen, and for the success he has brought to the island, but they refuse to be impressed. “Mallorca is a not a place that produces too many heroes,” Dear Mallorcans says, “but those it does are not feted in the least.” The truth of this is the reason why Manacor is the only place on the planet where Rafa Nadal can stroll down the street in broad daylight or walk into a shop safe in the knowledge that he will not be assailed for a signature or a photograph, not mobbed by strangers on the streets. It is another example of the islanders’ habitual reserve. Self-display of any kind is frowned upon (“Who does he think he is?” would be the reaction if Rafa’s success had led him to assume new airs and graces), and by the same rule, showering praise on people, however much deserved the praise might be, is considered in bad taste. “Anyone who tries to raise their head above the rest,” Dear Mallorcans tells us, “will immediately have it chopped off.” When Nadal is not playing tennis he has no desire to raise his head above the rest—quite the opposite, in fact. That is why, as Nadal’s mother, Ana María, says, Mallorca is the only place where he can disconnect completely. “If he weren’t able to keep coming back after tournaments, he would go mad,” she says. For Rafa Nadal, whose tennis life is a frenzy, the return home to Mallorca signifies peace.

  * * *

  CHAPTER 6

  “AN INVASION OF THE PUREST JOY”

  There are matches in which, come the final set, I still have something in reserve. I feel my game can still go up a gear. Not this time. Not at the start of the fifth at Wimbledon. I was playing as well as I knew how, yet I had lost each of the last two sets on a tiebreak to Federer. The danger now was to let it get to me, to lose heart. Federer was doing to me what I often did to other players. He had salvaged a very tough situation; he was fighting back from difficult odds, winning the most critical points. I had just thrown away a big chance to win. To complicate things further, he was serving first. That was an advantage in the decisive set because the chances were that I’d have to hold each one of my service games in order to remain in the match. Neither of us had broken the other’s serve in twenty-five games, and with both of us playing our best tennis, an early break by me did not feel too likely. But I was thinking straight. I was burning on the outside, but inside I was cold. As I sat in my chair waiting for the set to begin, I wasn’t lamenting the loss of the last two sets, I wasn’t letting my failure to capitalize on the 5–2 advantage I had on the last tiebreak eat me up. The double fault was gone, forgotten. I was thinking pragmatically, the way my father does under pressure. Enduring means accepting. Accepting things as they are and not as you would wish them to be, and then looking ahead, not behind. Which means taking stock of where you are and thinking coolly. I was telling myself: “Don’t worry about breaking his serve in the first game, focus on winning your own in the second one.” If not, if I made one mistake on my serve on the wrong point, he’d be 3–love up and there, mentally, I’d be on the rack. I’d see victory very far away, even if it was just the one break he’d made. I had to win my first service game and the next two, that was the priority now. Because he was coming from a very positive dynamic and he was at his most dangerous. But I knew what I had to do: if I managed to hold on to those first three service games, we’d be at 3–3 and I’d have halted his momentum. He wouldn’t have a following wind anymore, and we’d be back to all square in the mental game we were both playing, hidden to the crowd. The smallest error on his part, and again I’d be on the brink of winning; the smallest error by me, and he’d have victory in his hands. I wanted to make sure that I kept holding my serve until we reached that stage of the match when everything would be up for grabs.

  Losing to Federer in five sets the previous year at Wimbledon, after losing four break points in the final set, had haunted me, but this was the moment in the match when that experience of defeat proved most valuable. I had been very close to winning back then; I knew I could have, but the reason I didn’t win was that on too many points my emotions had gotten the better of my reason. I hadn’t been prepared to cope with the inevitable nerves and tension with the due measure of mental calm.

  I’d need that now because this was going to be what in Spain we’d call a “heart attack” set. I could tell from the glances I shot my family that they were frozen with fear, remembering 2007. I was remembering that too, but in a constructive light now. I had learned my lesson and felt capable of putting it into practice. I began the fifth set feeling lithe and loose, believing I was going to win. Blowing my chance in the fourth had made me stronger, not weaker. Because I wasn’t going to buckle again the way I had then. I wasn’t going to serve another weak double fault. I was going to think not of winning the game, but of winning the point. I was going to let instinct take over, let the thousands of hours of accumulated practice kick naturally into play.

  Two years earlier, after I’d beaten Federer at the French Open and lost to him in the first of our three Wimbledon finals, I had thought that there was more chance of him completing his Grand Slam foursome with a victory at Roland Garros than of me ever triumphing here in the Centre Court. Since 2006, I’d stayed at number two in the world rankings, giving him chase, but never quite getting close enough. It had been a time more of keeping pace than of dramatic leaps forward. I had great runs on clay again in 2007 and 2008, winning the French Open for a third and fourth time, establishing my authority over the competition in much the same way Federer had established his over Wimbledon. It was particularly satisfying to establish a record at Monte Carlo, my home away from home, to become, in 2008, the first professional player to win that tournament four times in a row. I beat Federer 7–5, 7–5 in the final, and immediately I felt a strong urge to get back home as soon as possible. I didn’t want to spend another night in Monte Carlo, however much I liked the place; I wanted to get back home straightaway, and the only way to do it was to catch a budget flight to Barcelona and from there connect to Palma. I remember the look of surprise on the other passengers’ faces at Nice airport as I joined them in the departure lounge to board the orange easyJet airplane. They were surprised to see me queuing up with the rest of them to buy a drink and a sandwich. One asked me why I didn’t fly on a private jet. The truth is I don’t like it. I could push one of my sponsors to fly me around, but I wouldn’t feel comfortable doing that. It’s a bit too flashy for me, and besides, I don’t like abusing my relationship with them. But when we had boarded and I struggled to fit the squat, wide Monte Carlo cup into the luggage compartment above my seat, I did for a second wonder whether I’d made the right choice There was an uproar in the flight cabin, laughter and clapping, as I tried from every angle to wedge the trophy into place. Another passenger on the flight asked me whether there were any serious rivals for me out there, beyond Federer. I didn’t hesitate to reply. “Novak Djokovic,” I said. “He’ll be challenging us hard in a couple of years’ time.”

  Already he had been giving me trouble. While I had beaten him in Indian Wells in 2007, to win my first tournament on U.S. soil, I lost to him in the following tournament, the Miami Masters. I won playing him in the French Open semis and in the Wimbledon semis that year too, then lost to him in the Canadian Masters, which he won. When we faced off again a year later, in 2008, I lost to him at Indian Wells, before going on to beat him in Hamburg and in the French Open. But he’d already won a Grand Slam in January that year, the Aus
tralian Open, at the age of twenty. Everybody still had their eyes on Federer and me, but we both knew Djokovic was the up-and-coming star and that our dual dominance was going to be more at risk from him than from any other player. Disconcertingly, he was also younger than me. This was something new. I had been accustomed all my life until this point, in tennis and also in the junior football leagues of Mallorca, to being the young kid who had the audacity to take on and beat his elders. This younger guy was now beating me, and even when I won, he was giving me very tough games. Federer would presumably retire before I did, assuming injury didn’t do me in. Djokovic would be dogging me right to the end of my career, trying everything to jump ahead of me in the rankings.

  On clay I had an edge over him, as I did over Federer and everybody else. But on hard courts I struggled against him, as I did against many others. That was the surface I had to work hardest on to adjust. I was failing to make the leap I needed to make on the faster surfaces, so far making little headway in Australia and less in what seemed to be the most difficult Grand Slam tournament for me, the US Open. I’m never satisfied, I always want more. Or, at any rate, I want to push myself to the very limit of my abilities.

  Meanwhile, I was making more money than I’d ever imagined, though the thought never even crossed my mind of buying myself an apartment in Monte Carlo, or Miami, or even Mallorca. I was more than happy to continue living at my parents’ home. But this was not a question of being frugal. I dreamed of buying myself a boat and anchoring it at Porto Cristo. I had the occasional notion of buying myself a fancy car, a fantasy that took shape one June day during the 2008 French Open.

  I was strolling around with my father when we passed a luxury sports car store. I stopped, looked in the window, saw this beautiful vehicle, and said to my father, “You know what? I think I might like to buy myself one of those.” My father looked at me as if I was nuts. I understood his reaction. I had expected it. There’s nothing written on the subject, no law against it, but I knew as well as he that owning such a car might be interpreted by the rest of the family and by our neighbors in Manacor—and, indeed, by my father himself—as a vulgarly ostentatious extravagance. I felt a bit sheepish. But, in my heart of hearts, I still wanted that car. If my father had said no, no way, I would have given up on the idea at once. I wouldn’t have gone ahead and bought the car without his blessing. But, instead, he came up with what he thought was a devious compromise. He said, “Look, if you win Wimbledon this year, you can buy yourself one of those. How about that?” I said, “How about if I win the French Open here in Paris this week?” He smiled and said, “No, no. You win Wimbledon, then you can buy it.” He had replied, as I knew perfectly well at the time, with the mischievous conviction that Wimbledon was not within my reach that year. He never thought he’d lose that bet. A month later, at the start of the final set on Wimbledon’s Centre Court, it was yet one more incentive for me to beat Federer and win the Grand Slam tournament all players most cherished.