Rafa

by Rafael Nadal

  That diesel engine image Carlos Costa uses to describe me was especially appropriate in this tournament. I started off sluggishly, but once I got going, there was no stopping me. I nearly went out in the second round, squeaking through in five sets, but the further I advanced, and the tougher the opponents were—by ranking, at any rate—the more my game improved. I beat Soderling in the quarterfinals in four sets and Andy Murray in the semis in three. In the match against Murray the Centre Court crowd behaved impeccably. The British have been longing to have their own Wimbledon champion since 1936, when Fred Perry last won, and the crowd made it quite clear from the start where their allegiances lay. Murray, seeded four in the tournament, was the best hope they had had in a long time. Yet I felt they were entirely fair with me throughout, not cheering my double faults, clapping after my better shots. And when, to the disappointment of the great majority, I won in straight sets, they did not begrudge me a warm round of applause.

  I had expected that if I made it to the final, I’d be meeting Roger Federer for the fourth year running. I didn’t. My opponent this time was the number twelve seed Tomas Berdych, of the Czech Republic, who’d had a brilliant run in the tournament, beating Federer in the quarters and Djokovic in the semifinals. Though complacency was the last thing on my mind, I was not nearly as nervous as I had been before the final two years earlier. Just as never having played a Wimbledon final before places you at a disadvantage, the experience of having done so—in my case four times now—provides a soothing measure of familiarity. Playing an almost perfect game, I won in three sets, 6–3, 7–5, 6–4, to collect my second Wimbledon championship and eighth Grand Slam.

  The game ended early, but I didn’t get any sleep that night. After the official Wimbledon dinner, where I had to wear a tuxedo and dance, as protocol requires, with the ladies’ winner, Serena Williams, there was no point in going to bed. The event ended after midnight, and I only had two and a half hours before I had to leave for the airport with my father and Titín. We were taking a dawn flight to Bilbao, from where we’d drive to Vitoria, an hour away, for the second and decisive round of injections to my knee. We could have scheduled the treatment for later, but I wanted to get back to Mallorca as soon as possible for the summer break I always take after Wimbledon. People say that the homing instinct is particularly strong among islanders. This is powerfully true in my case. When the urge to return home comes over me, sleep is no consideration.

  As it turned out, there had been no need for such an early start. The doctor judged that this was not the best time to inject me, because there was some reason to fear the knee might become infected. So we turned swiftly back to Bilbao and flew to Palma, returning later to Vitoria for the treatment, which has been very successful. My knee problems are gone. I took a rest, a longer one than I usually do in the summer, having judged that this was what I needed to be best prepared for the one big remaining challenge that awaited me: completing the foursome of Grand Slams by winning the US Open.

  I took three weeks off from tennis and this time not because of injury or because I was emotionally distraught, but for the more positive reason that the moment had come to press the reset button. I wanted to draw a line between the on-court and off-court tensions of the previous year and a half before starting again with a clean slate. I went fishing, swam in the sea, played golf, went clubbing with my friends, often very late into the night, and spent time with María Francisca. It was a relief, for a while at least, not to be constantly besieged by journalists, or to appear in the newspapers every day. It was liberating not to have to mix with the same players day in, day out in the locker rooms and club restaurants, or to watch my rivals’ matches on TV, or to drive from hotels to tennis clubs to hotels again to train or play, sometimes losing track when I woke up in the morning of what city I was in. I handle all this well, and I accept that it goes with the territory, but like everyone with a job, I need a vacation from time to time. In what I do for a living, the risk of burnout is high. I figured that if I were to have a chance of winning the US Open, the most important thing at this stage was to cleanse my mind so that when the time came to resume play I’d do so with the necessary hunger and enthusiasm.

  It wasn’t until early August, ten days before the start of my North American summer tour, that I resumed full training. That was a record. The minimum I had previously allowed myself before a tournament was fifteen days’ preparation. This time ten days felt right. It was not enough to win in Toronto, where I lost in the semifinals, or in Cincinnati, where I didn’t make it past the quarterfinals. But, while I didn’t play especially well in those competitions, I had a feeling in my gut that the best was yet to come. Sometimes it’s better not to arrive for a Grand Slam firing on all cylinders, because there’s the risk that if you fail to sustain your best level in the opening matches, you’ll become disappointed with yourself and morale will fade.

  The calculations proved to be right, in the end, although at first I wasn’t so sure. I started out a little hesitantly at Flushing Meadow, in part because of a spat with Toni that brought to the boil the long accumulated tensions between us. It had to do with something he had been badgering me about ever since we had started out together two decades earlier: the need, while competing, to put on what in Spanish we call una buena cara, “a good face.”

  To have a good face means to wear a serious, concentrated expression when you are playing, one that betrays as few negative emotions as possible, reflecting an attitude of persistence and professional discipline. The opposite of a good face is one that reflects the rage, the nerves, the tension, the fear, or even the elation you might be feeling. As Toni sees it, this is not merely a question of esthetics or good manners. The theory, and Joan Forcades agrees with Toni on this, is that the expression on your face conditions to a significant degree your state of mind and, in the case of a tennis player, the functioning of your body. In other words, if you manage to keep a good face during a match, the better the chances are that you won’t be distracted by the shot you just hit, be it good or bad, or the point you just lost or won, focusing all your mind instead on the present, on the immediate necessities of the job at hand. It’s another way of putting into practice Toni’s principle of endurance, and it’s another aspect of what Joan calls the “holistic” approach necessary to succeed in elite sports.

  And, by and large, I agree with them. That is why I do always endeavor to present a good face to the world, as I did, I think, consistently during the Wimbledon Final of 2008. It is no accident that my proudest recollection of that match is the attitude I displayed from start to finish. So, yes, Toni is right. Keeping a good face gives you a competitive edge in tennis. But I am not perfect and I cannot always disguise my feelings. And it was because I failed to do so, according to Toni, during my second-round match in the 2010 US Open, against Denis Istomin of Uzbekistan, that we had our quarrel—a quite needless quarrel, in my view, that he precipitated and that could have had a damaging impact on the rest of my New York campaign.

  This is what happened. Before that second-round match began, Toni had said to me I should play safe, hit high balls, stretch out the points, concentrate on getting my rhythm going for the tougher games that lay ahead. I did exactly as he said and I won. But I wasn’t playing at my best, and I imagine my face must have reflected a certain anxiety. In the locker room after the match, Toni complained that I had not played with a good face, that my attitude had been poor. I disagreed and said, “I don’t understand why you react this way when I played exactly as you told me to. And I don’t know why you feel the need to reproach me in this way when the majority of people only have praise for my attitude on court. If my face looks the way you said it does, it’s because I was feeling nervous, because I was afraid I might lose, which I think is an entirely understandable human reaction. But my concentration was good during the whole match and, anyway, I won. So what’s the big deal?”

  “OK,” he said. “OK. I just tell you what I think, and if you d
on’t like it, I’m off home and you can go find yourself another coach.”

  I wasn’t thrilled at his reaction. Toni must know that I am one of the easiest players on the tour to get on with. Few treat their coach with more respect than I do. I listen to Toni, I do as he instructs, and even when things between us become tense, I rarely answer back. I am well mannered on court, I train at a hundred percent, and in everyday life I don’t put any pressure on those around me, much less Toni. So when he responded the way he did that day in the locker room at Flushing Meadows, I felt I was being treated unjustly. But I made an effort and contained myself.

  “Look,” I said, “you always say the same thing. And usually I agree with you. But this time—this time—I believe you’re wrong.”

  He wouldn’t listen. “Fine,” said Toni. “If this is the way things are going to be, I can’t see any pleasure in being your coach any longer.” And, on that note, he stormed out of the locker room.

  It got me thinking. There’s a fine balance in the tension that my uncle’s presence in my life creates. Usually, as the record shows, it’s been a positive, creative tension. Sometimes, and this was a case in point, he doesn’t measure his words well and the effect is to sour, rather than to enhance, my mood, which in turn impacts my game. A trivial example of the sort of thing I have to put up with would be this: We are at a hotel somewhere in the world and we agree to meet downstairs in the car at a certain time to go to training. He arrives fifteen minutes late, but I don’t say anything. But the next time I arrive fifteen minutes late for an appointment, he complains that we can’t carry on this way.

  Another example. During a match I’ll hear him say, “Play aggressive!” before a return of serve, meaning he wants me to hit the ball back hard. I’ll go for it, the ball will go out, and then he’ll say, “Now wasn’t the moment.” But it was the moment; it just happened that I messed up the shot. If the ball had gone in, he’d have said, “Perfect!”

  And there’s another thing, a story he told a reporter during the US Open about a little incident that had happened one night five years earlier in an elevator in Shanghai. We were heading down for dinner when Benito pointed out that the dress code in the restaurant insisted that long pants be worn. I was wearing shorts, but Benito said, “Oh, don’t worry. Being who you are, they are not going to cause a fuss.” Toni, as he told the story, replied to Benito, “Fine example you’re setting for my nephew!” And then, turning to me, he said, “Go upstairs and get changed.”

  Now, I’m not denying those were the words that were spoken, more or less. But the truth of that story is that I did not need Toni to tell me I had to go back to my room to get changed. I had made up my mind I would the moment Benito pointed out what the restaurant’s rules were.

  Incidents like these mean that the atmosphere in our team is tenser when Toni’s around than when he’s not. What I never lose sight of is that, on balance, that tension benefits my game. Nor do I forget that he wouldn’t generate such a response in me, be it for good or for bad, if I didn’t feel a tremendous respect for him. When I am hard on him, it’s because I believe he asks for it. But one thing must be clear: If we have fights, they are to be taken in the context of a mutual trust and a deep affection built up over many years of being together. I do not begrudge him the public recognition he has. He may have obtained it due to me, but everything I have achieved in the game of tennis, all the opportunities I have had, are thanks to him. I’m especially grateful to him for having placed so much emphasis from the very beginning on making sure I kept my feet on the ground and never became complacent.

  I don’t think success has gone to my head, and if it hasn’t yet, I doubt it will happen now. I don’t need these lessons in humility anymore. I don’t need to be told anymore that I have “to put on a good face.” If I mess up sometimes on court, well, it’s part of the game. I am as critical of myself as anybody. While Toni’s refusal to let me off the hook has its value, in that he pushes me always to improve and do better, it can also be bad because he creates insecurity. I often do feel this way, especially in the early rounds of a tournament, and the truth is that while he deserves credit for so many good things in my career, he also deserves blame for me being more insecure than I ought to be.

  The joke is that lately he’s taken to saying that I have a tendency to underestimate myself. He says this is crazy given everything I’ve achieved. Before a match against an opponent who is way down the rankings, he’ll say to me now, “After all you’ve done you’re not going to get yourself into a fret over this game, are you?” Or he’ll say, “You’ve been number one or number two for years now, yet you’re still not convinced you’re a good player? You’re still afraid when you go up against the guy who’s ranked 120? To strut around like you own the game would be stupid, but come on, you’ve got to learn to know who you are!” The trouble with having this exaggerated sense of respect for all my opponents, he says, is that then on court my arm tightens up and I play beneath myself. And he’s right. Of course he’s right. But he’s the one who put in the software in the first place; the way he’s worked on me during all these years has influenced me to have precisely the opposite attitude to the one he demands of me now.

  The point now is to hold on to the lessons I’ve absorbed from Toni but to impose my own judgment more, striving to find the right balance between humility and overconfidence. Sure, you must always respect your rival, always consider the possibility that he might beat you, always play against the player ranked 500 in the world as if he were ranked number one or two. Toni has helped me to have this very clear in my mind, maybe too clear. What I am trying to teach myself now is to tilt the balance the other way, to exercise more autonomy over my life and disagree more openly with Toni, as I did at the start of the US Open. This may be a consequence, in part, of me seeing that Toni has his doubts and insecurities too; that he contradicts himself often; that he is not the all-knowing magician of my childhood.

  We patched up that scuffle in the locker room. We made up as we always do. We need each other, and as we both knew, with the prospect of a fourth Grand Slam around the corner, this was hardly the moment for another family split. The pattern in my life has been that I’ve emerged stronger from the crises I’ve endured, large and small. I began playing better and better in the US Open after that, and by the time I got to the final against Djokovic, I felt in top shape. My forehand, great all year, was rock solid during that first set; the backhand, perfectly solid; the serve, the best it had ever been.

  That did not stop me going 4–1 down in the second set. But that was more because he suddenly hit a patch in which every shot he went for worked out, than because I was going off my game. I knew he couldn’t sustain that level of play, and I felt I deserved better. And it was in that confident frame of mind that I broke his serve, saving a point that would have given him a 5–2 lead, and then went on to pull the score back to 4–4.

  I was on the upswing now, and he appeared to be discouraged at having lost his big chance to clinch the set, when, at 30–30 on his serve, the rain came. The early sunshine had given way to ever darker clouds, and I had seen streaks of lightning in the distance. The umpire stopped play, and the tournament referee came on court, telling us “I’m afraid this is going to be a nasty one.” He was right. We heard thunder from deep down in the locker room, where we remained for two hours, before reemerging to resume play at eight o’clock.

  The break had suited Djokovic more than it had me, just as it had Roger Federer that first time we went off for rain in Wimbledon two years earlier. I’d had the momentum and Djokovic had needed time to collect himself. He did, winning the interrupted game to go 5–4 up. I held my serve and then he, his, and once again I served to save the set at 6–5 down.

  I won the first point with a sharply angled forehand drive that he could do nothing about, and he got a bit of luck to win the next one, when my shot hit the net cord but, instead of dribbling over, dropped on my side. That turned out to be the
story of the set. I think I played as well as he did, probably better, controlling more points than he, putting him permanently on the back foot and obliging him to hustle more than to attack. That was a role I was more accustomed to playing, but he performed it well, retrieving some shots he had no right to, and won the set 7–5, the first one I had lost in the entire tournament.

  The rain had proved a blessing for him. At Wimbledon in 2008 it had turned out, in the end, to be a blessing for me. With the match tied at one set all, it was back to the beginning. We’d have to wait and see whether the gods of tennis would smile on me once more.

  * * *

  Rafa’s Women

  Rafa Nadal has three women in his life: his mother, his sister, and his girlfriend. They all share what his mother, Ana María Parera, calls “a doctrine” for how to conduct themselves in the world. The idea, as simple as it is unusual in the light of Rafa’s global celebrity, is best summed up for her by the most unexciting, unglamorous word in the dictionary: “normality.”

  Excitement and glamour are what the public sees in Rafa Nadal; what Ana María sees is a son who, when he leaves home, dwells in a world of chaos. Her duty as a mother is to be his anchor of stability, to create a safe haven for him from the bombardment on all fronts that he has endured since becoming, at what she regards as an alarmingly tender age, one of the most famous and admired athletes the world has known.

  This has meant shunning the media spotlight and relating to her son as if there were nothing remarkable in what he has achieved, an example followed by her daughter, Maribel, and by Rafa’s girlfriend since 2005, María Francisca Perelló. Each, in theory, could have made another choice. Ana María could have made a career out of blabbing to the world about her son’s inner feelings and foibles. Maribel, a tall and attractive blonde, could have become a rumor-mongering staple of gossip magazines. María Francisca could have become almost as recognizable a global personage as Rafa himself.