Rafael Nadal, Andy Murray and the hunt for a graceful and glorious exit

After all these years, it’s clear that there’s one thing Andy Murray and Rafael Nadal are terrible at: quitting.

In a sport where the brain can achieve success as much as the body, that quality has long propelled Murray and Nadal to their exalted status as two of the best players to pick up a racket. Murray has come back from two sets more times than any other player. Nadal has won matches with broken ribs and torn muscles. He underwent painkilling injections before his matches at the 2022 French Open and left Paris on crutches after winning that tournament for the fourteenth time.

As long as they have played tennis, they have competed as long as they could stand up straight – sometimes even when they couldn’t. After about a quarter of a century of so much positive reinforcement for that behavior, their brains are hardwired to live and play only one way.

But oneAs the 2023 season draws to a close and the eleventh month of next year approaches, that instinct will lead them down a path where no one wants to follow – chasing the mirage of a glorious, storybook ending that so few athletes experience, especially tennis players, who must earn all the glory on their own, without teammates carrying them across the finish line. Pete Sampras got it, but only a little.

With nothing left to prove and their legacies long since solidified, Nadal, 37, and Murray, 36, have essentially given the same answer to a question they’ve faced many times over the past two years as they battled ailing hips, sore feet and pain. ankles and some other injuries so they could start competing: why?

Here is Nadal in January, after limping to a podium in excruciating pain from a hip injury he suffered in a second-round loss to Mackenzie McDonald at the Australian Open – the most recent competitive match he played.

“It’s very simple: I love what I do. I like playing tennis,” the Spaniard said, his eyes glassy and his psyche shaken again in an injury-riddled career. “It’s not that complicated to understand, right? If you love doing one thing, sacrifice always makes sense in the end, because the word “sacrifice” doesn’t. When you do things you enjoy, it is ultimately not a sacrifice.”

And this was Murray in June in Surbiton, just outside London, when the eyes of the tennis world were on Paris but Murray was playing on grass at lower levels, having skipped most of the clay court season to prepare for the grass of Wimbledon. where he believed he had the best chance of making a deep run at a Grand Slam.

“I don’t feel like I’m just trying to hang on until the end,” Murray told a crowd of reporters after his opening round win. “I just want to play tennis because I enjoy it too. I love it. It’s not like this is a huge job for me. I like the training. I like to compete. I like to improve at something and get better at it every day and get the most out of myself doing something I love. As long as I do that in the coming years, while I still can, that is really what I want.”

Those statements are still undergoing the aging process.

Nadal has started posting photos of his training regularly again, but he made no promises following an announcement last month from Australian Open general manager Craig Tiley that the 22-time Grand Slam champion would compete in Melbourne early next year. Nadal has said he hopes 2024 will be a competitive farewell tour for him. There is talk of combining Carlos Alcaraz, his 20-year-old compatriot, to play doubles at the Olympic Games in Paris next summer.

His uncle, Toni Nadal, who coached him for most of his career and remains an advisor, has said he will continue playing beyond 2024 if healthy. Nadal makes no promises.

“I appreciate the confidence… I practice every day and work hard to get back as soon as possible,” He wrote on X, formerly Twitter, in response to Tiley’s statement and a summary of his highlights posted by Tennis Australia.

Murray was anything but optimistic after another painful early round defeat to Australia’s Alex de Minaur in Paris last week. He smashed his racket when it was over, having lost both a 5-2 lead and a match point in the third set. Then he told that to the British press he hadn’t enjoyed tennis much in recent months, and sometimes hard talks about his future may be on the horizon.

Nearly six years ago, Murray underwent the hip surgery that many specialists thought would end his singles career. Instead, his post-surgery ranking peaked at 37 this summer and the dream of a Sampras-like finish that every aging champion longs for came to life, at least for him.

And yet the passage of twenty years has clouded memories of it.

Everyone remembers that Sampras won his 14th and final Grand Slam title on home soil in his last match at the US Open in 2002.

As Paul Annacone, his former coach, has pointed out, fewer people remember that Sampras had not won a tournament in two years before and had endured months of calls from tennis pundits to quit.

“I told my wife that if Pete wanted to win again and he wasn’t injured, he would, and she told me I was crazy,” Annacone recalled in an interview as Roger Federer was looking for his own glorious farewell.

Sampras wins the US Open trophy in what was his final match (Timothy A Clary/AFP via Getty Images)

Furthermore, no one, not even Sampras, knew at the time that the 2002 US Open win was his walk-off. He debated whether to play again for almost a year before deciding to end his career just after his 32nd birthday.

Novak Djokovic has won nine Grand Slam titles since he turned 32. Annacone has no doubt that Sampras left some championships in his tennis bag. “Don’t put anything beyond the super elites,” he said.

That said, Murray and Nadal are half a decade removed from their early 30s. Murray is desperate for another deep run in a major tournament, but he hasn’t played in the second week of a Grand Slam since 2017, when his right hip was made of bone and cartilage rather than mainly metal.

Nadal said this year that he wants to play all his favorite tournaments one last time in 2024, to show his gratitude for everything the sport has given him. Recent history suggests this could be a struggle.

Due to his chronic foot injury, he missed the second half of 2021. Injuries to his foot, ribs and abdominal muscles limited his play in the second half of last year. The injury in Australia led to Nadal having to undergo arthroscopic surgery on his hip flexor and labrum in June, a procedure that doctors at the time predicted would take five months to recover from.

Nadal and Murray have won so much for so long. However, their main opponent – ​​the aging process – remains undefeated.

(Top Photos: Getty Images)