Rafael Nadal

A page and forum to discuss all things Rafael Nadal.

Nadal 5

Current ranking: 14

Last result: Australian Open second round (lost to Mackenzie McDonald)

Next tournament: Roland Garros

40 Comments on Rafael Nadal

  1. NNY7: I’ve no doubt that the boos hurt Rafa to the core at the moment it was happening. We all saw the tears. By Rafa’s own account, the physical pain he was experiencing felt like a knife in the back. Couple that with the realization that he would have to endure the rest of the match, knowing he had no chance to win. But I don’t think those things alone were the reasons for the tears. I do think he was truly emotionally hurt. By the time of the final ceremony, the immediacy of the moment had passed, so Rafa could reflect, gather his thoughts, and say what he felt was appropriate. That he could be so magnanimous about it is a testament to his character.

    Reply

    • Jpacnw,

      The description of the pain like a knife in his back is something I can totally understand. I have been there and it’s just the absolute worst. I am fortunate in that I don’t have to play competitive tennis! Back pain can make even the little things in life difficult, but it’s very different from a professional athlete.

      I think the pain killers must have kicked in and helped him at least get through the match. I decided to delete my recording of the match without ever having watched that third set. I didn’t think it would be good for me to watch it. Much better to try and put it behind me.

      We know Rafa is amazing. There’s nothing that speaks to the character of an athlete than being able to be gracious in probably one of the worst moments of his life.

      Reply

    • Thanks for posting this. Very insightful.

      Listen. Today’s tennis crowd is very simple givwe or take +/-5%:
      1. 50% Federer fans (aka Anyone But Rafa fans aka 80% of Nole fans).
      2. 40% Rafans
      3. 10% everybody else (true Nole fans, Muzza fans, patriotic fans, casual fans).

      The booing was obviously from the Anyone But Rafa federazzi camp pure and simple.

      #NoClass

      Reply

  2. Rafans, it’s the anniversary of Rafa’s return at Vina del Mar after his long injury lay off. Remember how he set the tennis world alight, how TV stations scrambled to cover a little 250 clay tournament in the back of beyond, how tennis journalists were reduced to simpering idiots at the prospect of seeing Rafa play again? Not only was Vina del Mar live streamed, it was covered live on TV!

    It seems like just yesterday…..

    Reply

    • Do I remember? I was so overjoyed to see him on the courts again. Of course, I had continued to follow and watch tennis during his absence, but it just wasn’t the same. Initially I thought I would have to find some funky internet stream on which to watch it, and then a week or so before the event, I don’t remember exactly, the Tennis Channel announced that they would cover it and started promoting their coverage. What a treat to once again be able to see him in full HD and competing. He was rusty, of course, and at the time, none of us knew how spectacular his comeback would prove to be.

      Reply

  3. Rafa Nadal takes on Spain, emerges with victory for charity
    by Brad Willis on January 31, 2014 10:22 AM

    Give it to PokerStars SportStar Rafa Nadal: the man is not afraid of competing at a disadvantage. And then give it to him again: even when the odds are stacked against him, he can still win.

    That’s what happened today as tennis’ living legend took on Spain’s poker players in a €3,000 heads-up Zoom poker contest on PokerStars.es. The rules were simple. Rafa sat down in his hometown of Porto Cristo, Mallorca to play a microstakes heads-up Zoom game. For one hour, he would take on all comers. For every hand he won, he’d get a point. For every hand everybody else won, Spain would get a point. If he won more hands, PokerStars would donate €3,000 to charity. If Spain won, everyone who played against Rafa would get a seat in a €3,000 freeroll.

    Keep in mind, Rafa was playing with a handicap. First, he would be taking questions from the rail for the whole hour as Facebook and Twitter users chimed in with the #askrafa hashtag. Second, the entire event was being webcast on PokerStars.tv, so Rafa’s opponents could actually watch his face as the hands played out. This should not have made it easy. And yet…Rafa went out to an early lead and didn’t give it up.

    Over the next hour, Rafa played exactly 75 hands. He won 2/3 of them. By the time the 60 minutes had passed, Rafa had answered countless questions, chatted with his fans, and put on a great show (including picking up aces a couple of times).

    The result, a smiling tennis legend who had just beaten his entire country at a poker contest. When it was all said and done, Rafa had won 50 hands to Spain’s 25 hands. While the actual stakes in the game were irrelevant, the result was not.
    Because Rafa won the contest, PokerStars will give €3,000 to The Good Hand Project charity.

    Congratulations, Rafa, on yet another victory.

    Go to this link to see the pictures.

    http://www.pokerstarsblog.com/rafa_nadal/2014/rafa-nadal-takes-on-spain-emerges-with-v-145815.html

    Reply

  4. It’s hard to believe that a year has passed since we first saw Rafa return at Vina Del Mar. I remember not knowing if anyone would televise the event. But then the tennis channel stepped up and said that they would be covering this tournament. I was thrilled to know that I would get to see Rafa play!

    At that time, who among us could have imagined the year that Rafa would have!

    Reply

  5. “@genny_ss: As per @angelrigueira, Rafa’s said in Gala “MundoDeportivo” the back isn’t OK yet & doesn’t know if he’ll play in BA.He’ll decide on weekend”

    “Via @gandaines: “According to the news from IB3 Rafael Nadal will start training again on Thursday, Buenos Aires tournament is still in the air…”

    Reply

      • They had a headline on the home page at vb saying that according to an IB3 news report, Rafa would begin training on Thursday, as has already been reported here.

        But there is no information as to whether or not he will play in Buenos Aires. I really hope that he decides to skip it. Backs can be tricky. You don’t want to rush your recovery. I am sure that Rafa has had the very best care. Since he has not had any back problems in the past, he should have a fairly easy recovery. I am sure that in addition to the anti-inflammatories, he was given physio and rehab to strengthen the area.

        I just hope that Rafa gives himself a bit more time. I just think that Buenos Aires is a bit too soon.

        Reply

    • Seems to me if he was planning on playing BA he would be in Argentina by Friday at least. Since he is only starting practice on Thursday, doubt he will turn up for Copa Claro.

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      • yeah, makes sense…i think he knows he is not quite ready for it …I hope he is 100% very soon though..a torturous season awaits him… you have to hold on to that no.1 ranking, rafa !

        Reply

  6. In win-obsessed world, Nadal offered education in defeat

    Rohit Brijnath
    The Straits Times
    Tuesday, Feb 04, 2014

    Joan Solsona is painting a competitive picture. Rafael Nadal, he beckons me to imagine, is skipping stones across the water. A friend is winning this idle competition, so Nadal cannot stop. His compulsion is to be the better man.

    “He has to be a winner,” says Solsona, “otherwise it’s like he cannot sleep. If he doesn’t win, everyone must keep playing. In golf, it is the same. These are his hobbies, imagine what he is like in tennis, his professional life.”

    My conversation with Solsona – a Spanish journalist who has known Nadal since he was 12 – occurs an hour before the Australian Open final last Sunday as I try to comprehend Nadal’s urge to win. If his appetite for victory suggests a primitive stone-age man with a club, it also makes him a more evolved competitor than his peers. Yet this idea is transplanted after the final by a even more baffling consideration. If winning is so essential to his being, how does he lose so well?

    That Nadal fought on against Stanislas Wawrinka was an answering to the coding of his DNA. Expected you might think, yet fellow athletes, who understand effort better than us, swooned. Joel Selwood, an Australian Rules football captain, from a physically brutal sport, tweeted: “Would love #Nadal as a team-mate!” But if Nadal had quit, this might have been understandable. Accosted again by injury he was agonised by it, but never let it win. This victory he didn’t allow.

    He played on for he answered another code, a worthy, unwritten one, that demands you complete a match. To finish is to not hand the other man an amputated victory and in effect you are honouring the man who is destroying you. But if Nadal said he did this for Wawrinka, and the fans, he also did it “for me”. To finish is to practise not giving up, it is to give yourself a chance – Wawrinka might have collapsed – and it is later a reflection of who he is: the man who gave everything. Or else is nothing.

    Sainthood is not on offer in athletic arenas for to expect it is to strip sport of its different complexions and to misunderstand its madness. If we are hostile in the stands, imagine the middle. Imagine the fury, the exhaustion, the want. The athlete is immersed, even lost, often deaf, in this reactive, instinctive world of no respite. That he can think clearly is staggering, that he might hurl an unsavoury epithet at himself or a toss a racket is human.

    Yet as much as we relish the mercurial man, we must marvel at how Nadal kept a hold of himself while his world fell apart. There is unkind chatter over his medical time-out as a calculated ploy – a tennis version of football’s diver – but if he returned immediately to 195kmh serves and unaffected sprints then a case might be made. But no, he was hurt, it was evident, and the issue instead was his ability to reach into a decency when the moment was uniquely indecent to him.

    The endurance of Nadal lies not in miles run but conversely in days of sitting idle as the instrument that is his body was being repaired. He endured pain in the knees, he endured frustration as other men rose while he had fallen, he endured even as his stationary life reversed the very idea of his existence.

    Everything must be rebuilt, over months, first body, then movement, then precision, then hope, and then another body part, this time the back, mutinies. You want to smash every racket at this bullying by life – why me, why again – yet after the match, with no time for calmness to settle, Nadal says: “Just a tough day. But lot of people in the world have a lot of very tough days. I am not this kind of person, so I feel very lucky.”

    Nadal’s uncle forbade the throwing of a racket for it was disrespectful to an instrument many kids ache to own. Such tutoring by family to distinguish between athletic disappointment and real suffering has kept him from an excessively self-centred view of life. Taught by the example of Roger Federer, he has found the balance between sport and life. Educated by the brutality of his sport – “You’re out there alone. You really are. It’s the ultimate one-on-one sport,” said Pete Sampras – it has bred a particular respect: you are alone, but you understand so is the next man.

    Nadal did not skip his press conference, for tennis demands the athlete must confront rival, crowd and then interrogation. This is his job, yet here also lay his mettle. On the third question on his injured back, he responded: “It is not the moment, as I said after the first question. This is not the moment to talk a lot about the back.”

    To a query on the briefly petulant crowd, he noted: “You never will hear me talk badly about the crowd here.”

    Winning tells grand stories as it did about Wawrinka’s urge to improve in athletic middle-age, but the champion is not enough in sport. To decode sport, we need the defeated man. For everyone is defeated and only in the emotional, public whirlpool of loss can we appreciate the core of the athlete. We see them wear masks, resort to cliche, show defiance – and why not, they are hurt – but also lift. Such athletes reveal to us not mythical hero, but fine human player.

    And, if we can – and must – look past this tribalistic and mundane view of tennis, where to elevate Federer we must diminish Nadal, and vice versa, we will find a grateful education. For by being weepy yet never whiny, Nadal defeated self-pity. Like a stone thrown over water, he, the competitor, skipped over sports’ demons and found grace on the other shore. This is victory in itself.

    http://news.asiaone.com/news/sports/win-obsessed-world-nadal-offered-education-defeat?page=0%2C0

    Reply

  9. ^^I think the women, by the way, are Amaya Valdemoro, basketball player, Ona Carbonell, synchronized swimmer, and Laia Sanz, motorcyclist, all there for the awards function.

    Reply

    • Fascinating article. It’s what many have been postulating for a long time but Andrew Barton backs it up with an impressive analysis of the stats. The ‘suits’ at the ATP and ITF must have nightmares about the future as they contemplate the prospect of what will happen when the golden geese hang up their racquets.
      #HopingForMiracles

      Reply

      • ^^^Not to mention “gamesmanship and cheating”! Oh Rafa, you had to wade into that hornet’s nest by un-masking the GOAT.

        Look to the GOAT purveyors to suddenly find value in DC now that his Fed-ness has seen an opportunity to add a DC trophy to his illustrious resume……..

        Reply

  14. Genny SS ‏@genny_ss 3m
    Toni confirms Rafa’s OK AFA back is concerned but have to wait till evening. Plane tickets 2 BA f4 tomorrow, not canceled(via @tomeuterrasa)

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  15. Latest update:

    “Via @genny_ss : As per @tomeuterrasa today’s Rafa’s training has been canceled & Toni’s confirmed him Rafa’s suffered a colic during the night. BA uncertain
    If Rafa feels better he’ll train in evening. He needs to go on court & get feeling on his back to decide if he goes to ARG (@SERdepbaleares)”

    I know this is a tad……much, details about Rafa’s colicky night ‘n all! But this is Rafa, his fans need to know!

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  17. Weird. On Nadalnews.com, Miri (the admin) has reported that Rafa officially withdrew from BA. She did a screengrab of the Tweet and the video, but both the tweet and the video were removed in the past half hour, so the video can’t be seen, but she posted the tweet. Wonder what’s up.

    Reply

  20. I am relieved to know that Rafa is out of Buenos Aires. A stomach virus is never any fun, but at least Rafa gets to have a bit more time before he gets back in action. I didn’t want him to push it with the back.

    He made the right decision.

    Reply

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