What we’ll remember about Nadal: The Sporting Life by Rudraneil Sengupta

In the final that year, his opponent Mariano Puerta had the opportunity to tie the match presented on a silver platter–three set points in the fourth set. No one, not the commentator, nor the experts on TV, not Puerta, believed that the 19-year-old with sweat-tangled long hair had much of a chance. But he ended up chasing down the length of the court to not just retrieve a Puerta drop shot no other player would have reached, but angled and placed his return just the way he wanted to.

“How was he able to get to that ball?” Puerta wondered at the press conference.

The answer, as Rafael Nadal, 19, gave it, was “I really fighted, no?”

Seventeen years and 20 Grand Slams later, Nadal, 35, stood across from Daniil Medvedev in the final of the Australian Open. The 25-year-old Russian—the future of men’s tennis—was two sets up and gleefully sitting on triple break point in the third.

So, of course, this is when Nadal decides to bring out the fight. This time around, he has the weather-beaten face of a sailor, a smile that’s turned from dazzling to gently affectionate, and a body that’s been pushed so much and so often, he calls it a “miracle” that he’s still playing. But, here, right now, the body has forgotten it’s age and past punishment. Here, it’s serving one purpose—to respond to the mind’s call to “fight”. If it has to sprint at the speed of a greyhound to get to a drop shot, it will. It will accelerate, decelerate, twist, turn, change direction and allow whipped forehands to be hit with barely believable pace and topspin.

Later, after winning his 21st Slam, a record in men’s singles, Nadal gently dismissed all suggestions of him being Greatest Of All Time. “I don’t care much if I’m the one, not the one, best in history, not best in history,” he said. “But I believe I hold a very positive spirit, I just fight, just believe that I will find a solution. And today I fighted, no?”

(Or, as Medvedev put it, “Rafa was just unreal, man.”)

It’s this unreal fight in him that has illuminated tennis for almost two decades. It’s what’s spurred his brilliant, if loving, rivalry with the other Greatest Of All Time, Roger Federer, and given us some of the most blinding matches in tennis history. That list includes his outlandish 13 title triumphs at Roland Garros. But perhaps even more so, because they were not considered his turf, the attritional battles at the Wimbledon. (Is the 2008 final against Federer not the finest ever played?) Even the ones he lost, like the Australian Open in 2012 to Novak Djokovic, or in 2017 to Federer, must surely be two of the greatest matches in men’s tennis.

The fight is not even the most remarkable thing about Nadal. It’s his grace. His centredness. It’s the fact that his fight is not about aggression or enemies or to prove a point or the compulsion to win. He’s never played a match that left him in despair. He’s never met an opponent he did not like, and in turn, there aren’t many opponents who don’t like him. For Nadal, the “best player in the world” is always Federer, and sometimes Djokovic and his colleagues on tour are almost always “very nice”. His ability to see the best in people is boundless.

At the 2009 US Open, a court invader managed to get to Nadal. He gave the Spaniard a hug before security arrived. “It’s ok, it’s ok, no problem,” Nadal told the guards as they dragged the man away.

Later, at the presser, he described the invader as “very nice”.

Nadal: “He said ‘I love you’ and he kiss me.”

Reporter: “In Spanish?”

Nadal: “No, in English, but I understand that.”