Nadal’s beautiful yet brutal symphony

Mumbai: Among the numerous signature Rafael Nadal things in tennis — those “Vamos”-infused fist bumps, that immaculate arrangement of bottles on court and almost robotic pre-serve routines, those ripped muscles and once-upon-a-time sleeveless tees — there’s one that particularly stands out.
“Deux mille cinq (2005 in French), Deux mille six (2006), Deux mille sept (2007), Deux mille huit (2008), Deux mille dix (2010), Deux mille onze (2011), Deux mille douze (2012), Deux mille treize (2013), Deux mille quatorze (2014), Deux mille dix-sept (2017), Deux mille dix-huit (2018), Deux mille dix-neuf (2019), Deux mille vingt (2020), Et deux mille vingt-deux (2022).”
Nadal’s introduction before his match at this year’s French Open — a simple count of his titles at Roland Garros — was unlike anything heard or seen before inside a tennis court. It was lengthy, breathless, alluring, sensational.
A bit like the protagonist’s style of play, which made brutal also a thing of beauty.
A style that many former tennis players and experts believed wouldn’t survive for too long. A style so taxing that it inflicted a wide range of serious injuries on the body — knee, elbow, ankle, back, wrist, abdomen, hip, you could go on — but still withstood it all for a professional career spanning over two decades. A style that called upon a sturdy mind to complement the strenuous physicality. A style with which one of the greatest tennis players of all time hit the high of winning 22 Grand Slams, yet also missed a fair volume of chances to add to it.
Still, as Nadal looked back at a professional career that he announced he will end at next month’s Davis Cup Finals, the 38-year-old Spaniard believed it was a “much more successful career than I could have ever imagined”.
Perhaps because elite tennis did not have a prototype for the kind of game that a Spanish kid from the island of Mallorca dished out. At a time when serving big, volleying and rushing to the net was still in fashion, Nadal made bullying from the baseline look cool. He’d run from the left of the court to the right as if he could do it all day; he’d go from deep behind the baseline to the foot of the net and back again as if there was no other way out; he’d fight for every point as if it was the last he was ever going to play — no matter the tournament, round or opponent.
If you had to get past Nadal at the baseline, you had to be really good. If you had to out-run Nadal in a match, you had to be really fit. If you had to outfight Nadal on a particular day, you had to be really resolute.
“I’m going to miss watching this bloke fighting for every point like no other,” the legendary Rod Laver wrote on X.
That game, and the mindset, traces back to Nadal’s early steps in the sport. Shaped by his uncle Toni who introduced him to tennis at age three and encouraged the natural right-hander to play left-handed, Nadal was unlike any of his other trainees, as he paints it in his autobiography. He would run for ball after ball, day after day. He was made to sweep courts after practice. He was not allowed to celebrate his first international tournament victory after coming back home, because there were far more and greater tournaments to win. Stay humble.
Which he did, carrying that same game style, mindset and humility after turning professional in 2001 at 15. The 14 French Open trophies remain barely believable, but the two Wimbledon titles on grass to go with the six on hard courts proved he was more than simply the “King of Clay”.
And while his mental tenacity remained steadfast throughout his competitive days, Nadal also kept looking for ways to improve his game. That forehand — you could tell Nadal’s confidence on the day just by the way he hit his forehands down the line — was always damaging but Nadal bettered his backhand significantly over the years. His net play and volleying were always steady, and through the latter years of his career with Carlos Moya in his coaching team, his serves got more string and the points a bit shorter a lot more frequently.
Still, all those long, physically taxing points through his career did have an impact. Nadal was forced to sit out of 18 Grand Slams across his 23-year career, right from his first year on the tour in 2003 to the last in 2024. Injuries and lengthy layoffs became common, so did the multiple comebacks that he had to chart every time.
That his mind was still in it for the fight, but not quite the body, was evident in his most recent successful comeback. After being sidelined for almost six months at the backend of 2021, Nadal returned in 2022 to win the Australian Open overcoming a two-set deficit in the final against Daniil Medvedev. He then went on to also win the French Open, which as it turns out was his final Grand Slam glory after being hampered by persistent injuries in the last couple of years.
In that Paris triumph a couple of years ago, Nadal revealed he had to inject pain-killing injections daily on his troublesome foot. It was a reminder that one of the greatest fighters in the history of the sport was also fighting the frailties of an increasingly battered body.
Yet there he was, doing what he so often did all through his career — win games of tennis being brutal yet beautiful; win tournaments being an unparalleled fighter; win fans over being a humble champion.