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Rafael Nadal Interview with El Pais
Good, candid interview in Spanish with El Pais but machine translation here, quickly cut and pasted.
Rafa Nadal: “Cuando llegue a Par?s sabr? si es mi ?ltimo a?o. Estoy preparado” | EL PA?S Semanal | EL PA?S
Retirement:
Rafa Nadal: "When I get to Paris I'll know if it's my last year. And there will be a prior announcement. It will have been five months of margin in the circuit and I will know my reality: you can intuit those things, but until you feel them you can't do anything. I'm ready. I am aware that it is very likely that it will be my last year.
What makes players great
Essentially, Rafa says that no one can play their best every day, so the ones that come out on top at the end of the year are the ones that can win when they play badly. The ones that control the ball.
Rafa; It's no matter how hard the ball is hit, the best players are always control players. You don't see very top players who don't feel the ball extraordinarily. Because in the end the games are decided in a few balls and the players with the most sensitivity in the hand are the ones who have the most regularity, those who are at the top, those who appear in the final rounds. Explosive players are very dangerous, yes. But they are a Russian roulette
Pain
Ever since 2015 he has suffered from pain in his foot, which compromises everything else. "It is his left foot and M?ller-Weiss syndrome, a degenerative disease that weakens the tarsian scaphoid bone, deforms the limb and causes pain even when walking"
Rafa: "That's what really destroys me," he continues. "It destroys my body: everything else has been destructured to try to save my foot. I was able to save it, but it has decompensated the rest. And what ends up destroying me is having more pain every day.
Fedal Competition vs Djokovic
Rafa: "It's a very radical combination of styles. Federer was perfection at an aesthetic level, at the level of elegance, at a technical level. (Beware: I have a very good technique, a lot, but the technique is not the same as aesthetics. They are two different things. He had an incredible technique doing very beautiful things with impressive elegance). When I arrived, he was number one in the world, and he gets a rival with long hair and an exuberant physique. Elegance against a warrior. There was a pack of combination of personalities and styles; and that, together with the fact that we have played many games in the most important scenarios, turned our rivalry into something that transcended more than any other duel.
... 'Federer is not much injured either, but he got a rival, which was me, who punished his only weak point. And I could do that because I was left-handed. If I had been right-handed, I wouldn't have been able to punish him.
Djokovic.
He has greatly enhanced his virtues, but he has not adapted his game in a radical way. I had a very marked tactic to play against Federer; he knew what I was going to look for, I knew he would try to defend himself. It was a chess game. And when you were wrong, you knew it. With Djokovic there is not that level of strategy in the matches. You have to play at a very high level and for a long time to beat it, it's different.
Federer.
When he returns in 2017, after his injury, he makes a very important change. Change the racket for a bigger one, which hits harder, and makes a mental change. Since he knows he can't run like before, he becomes a much more aggressive player, and it hurts me a lot. He was a better player than me on hard track, but until that moment I think I had beaten him more times there. But he reinvents himself, and gives one more turn to his game: hyper-aggressive. My tactic of punishing his backhand still works, but it doesn't have so much effect because he won't let me: he dedicates himself to playing very fast. He didn't allow me to do my repetition against his weak point. It's something he had made a mistake with in his career: he let me repeat the blows towards his reverse. His exit was a cut setback, and I have a very good ball when they cut it, it doesn't bother me, I like to return it and I return it strong, I'm not uncomfortable.
Q: Would I have wanted to be Federer if it hadn't been Rafa Nadal?
Rafa: Since I can remember, he is the player who has impressed me the most, the one who has amused me the most, the one who has moved me the most. I was more excited to see Federer play than Djokovic, and in the end tennis is emotion, the emotion is what drags you to him.
Photo son with racket
Rafael Nadal Parera (Manacor, 37 years old) is with his family (Xisca Perell?, his wife, and Rafael Nadal, his son, with a tiny tennis racket.
filedata/fetch?id=103003&d=1704141905&type=thumb
Good, candid interview in Spanish with El Pais but machine translation here, quickly cut and pasted.
Rafa Nadal: “Cuando llegue a Par?s sabr? si es mi ?ltimo a?o. Estoy preparado” | EL PA?S Semanal | EL PA?S
Retirement:
Rafa Nadal: "When I get to Paris I'll know if it's my last year. And there will be a prior announcement. It will have been five months of margin in the circuit and I will know my reality: you can intuit those things, but until you feel them you can't do anything. I'm ready. I am aware that it is very likely that it will be my last year.
What makes players great
Essentially, Rafa says that no one can play their best every day, so the ones that come out on top at the end of the year are the ones that can win when they play badly. The ones that control the ball.
Rafa; It's no matter how hard the ball is hit, the best players are always control players. You don't see very top players who don't feel the ball extraordinarily. Because in the end the games are decided in a few balls and the players with the most sensitivity in the hand are the ones who have the most regularity, those who are at the top, those who appear in the final rounds. Explosive players are very dangerous, yes. But they are a Russian roulette
Pain
Ever since 2015 he has suffered from pain in his foot, which compromises everything else. "It is his left foot and M?ller-Weiss syndrome, a degenerative disease that weakens the tarsian scaphoid bone, deforms the limb and causes pain even when walking"
Rafa: "That's what really destroys me," he continues. "It destroys my body: everything else has been destructured to try to save my foot. I was able to save it, but it has decompensated the rest. And what ends up destroying me is having more pain every day.
Fedal Competition vs Djokovic
Rafa: "It's a very radical combination of styles. Federer was perfection at an aesthetic level, at the level of elegance, at a technical level. (Beware: I have a very good technique, a lot, but the technique is not the same as aesthetics. They are two different things. He had an incredible technique doing very beautiful things with impressive elegance). When I arrived, he was number one in the world, and he gets a rival with long hair and an exuberant physique. Elegance against a warrior. There was a pack of combination of personalities and styles; and that, together with the fact that we have played many games in the most important scenarios, turned our rivalry into something that transcended more than any other duel.
... 'Federer is not much injured either, but he got a rival, which was me, who punished his only weak point. And I could do that because I was left-handed. If I had been right-handed, I wouldn't have been able to punish him.
Djokovic.
He has greatly enhanced his virtues, but he has not adapted his game in a radical way. I had a very marked tactic to play against Federer; he knew what I was going to look for, I knew he would try to defend himself. It was a chess game. And when you were wrong, you knew it. With Djokovic there is not that level of strategy in the matches. You have to play at a very high level and for a long time to beat it, it's different.
Federer.
When he returns in 2017, after his injury, he makes a very important change. Change the racket for a bigger one, which hits harder, and makes a mental change. Since he knows he can't run like before, he becomes a much more aggressive player, and it hurts me a lot. He was a better player than me on hard track, but until that moment I think I had beaten him more times there. But he reinvents himself, and gives one more turn to his game: hyper-aggressive. My tactic of punishing his backhand still works, but it doesn't have so much effect because he won't let me: he dedicates himself to playing very fast. He didn't allow me to do my repetition against his weak point. It's something he had made a mistake with in his career: he let me repeat the blows towards his reverse. His exit was a cut setback, and I have a very good ball when they cut it, it doesn't bother me, I like to return it and I return it strong, I'm not uncomfortable.
Q: Would I have wanted to be Federer if it hadn't been Rafa Nadal?
Rafa: Since I can remember, he is the player who has impressed me the most, the one who has amused me the most, the one who has moved me the most. I was more excited to see Federer play than Djokovic, and in the end tennis is emotion, the emotion is what drags you to him.
Photo son with racket
Rafael Nadal Parera (Manacor, 37 years old) is with his family (Xisca Perell?, his wife, and Rafael Nadal, his son, with a tiny tennis racket.
filedata/fetch?id=103003&d=1704141905&type=thumb