Rafael Nadal’s tennis career: a king of clay who should be remembered as so much more

Rafael Nadal retired from tennis on Tuesday evening. He won 22 Grand Slam titles on all three tennis surfaces in 23 years, with an Olympic gold medal and a total of 92 ATP titles. He was most dominant on clay, winning 63 percent of his titles on the surface and completing an 81-match win streak between April 2005 and May 2007, which remains the longest streak on a single surface in the Open era of men’s tennis.

He also spent his entire career battling his own body, with Nadal’s injuries, both acute and chronic, determining the trajectory of his career and, to some extent, the way he played tennis.

King of clay. Warrior. Spanish bull. Nadal embodied all of these things, and the tribute written in that way is not ill-fitting.

But to describe Nadal solely in such terms is to do a catastrophic disservice to one of the greatest men’s tennis players of all time. A tennis player in constant evolution, Nadal and his rivalry with Roger Federer and Novak Djokovic that shaped the era of the ‘Big Three’ have reshaped the sport. Nadal possessed shot-making talent, tennis IQ, finesse and flair that was too often lost in the brick-red dust.

Rafael Nadal’s greatness on clay has sometimes overshadowed the magnitude of that greatness. (Julian Finney/Getty Images)

The world tends to define athletes and sometimes people in general in absolute terms. It’s a way to understand complex personalities and artists by reducing them to a single characteristic, like a superhero. It also provides easy archetypes for comparison: in Nadal’s case, he was the ferocious physicality versus the effortless elegance of Federer and the smooth flexibility of Djokovic.

All three suffered because of their superheroism. Federer was so aesthetically pleasing that his superb fitness and remarkable defensive abilities were obscured. Djokovic was cast as reactive, which does not do justice to his point construction or his extra equipment in pressure moments (the all-or-nothing cross-court forehand against Federer in the 2011 US Open semi-final is just one example of many). Djokovic’s three French Open titles barely register because of the 10 he won in Melbourne, and who cares if he has a hat-trick of wins when your biggest rival has won 11 more times? Well, as so many players said The Athletics in June, Djokovic may be the second-best male player of all time on clay.

Nadal still suffered most from his greatness in one area. He was perhaps the second most complete male baseliner the sport has ever played, after Djokovic, with an all-round game good enough to earn him four US Opens (tied with Djokovic and just one short of the record from the Open era of Federer, Pete Sampras and Jimmy Connors), and two Wimbledons from five final appearances at the All England Club. As he developed his game to accommodate the limitations of his body and began cutting points in a more coordinated manner, he became one of the best volleyers on the ATP Tour.

Subtract Nadal’s fourteen Roland Garros titles and his eight remaining majors put him above tennis legends such as John McEnroe and Boris Becker, tying him with Andre Agassi, Connors and Ivan Lendl. It is true that some surface homogenization in the early 2000s helped him do more than his compatriots who specialized in clay courts, such as Sergi Bruguera, Carlos Moya, Albert Costa and Juan Carlos Ferrero – all of whom won the French Open won, but not big ones anymore – but Nadal’s mastery. of any surface emerged from the way he reconfigured tennis itself alongside Djokovic and to a lesser extent Federer.

Nadal changed the sport in countless ways. His ability to shoot, both on the slide and while running, and the invisible turns and kicks of his forehand helped redefine the mechanics of tennis (as with changing the surface, changing equipment also helped). Even that shot, which he splintered beautifully in the inside-out thrash, the banana whip, the cross-court hook and so many more variations, is normally depicted in terms of brute force, as opposed to David Foster Wallace’s ‘liquid whip’ description of Federer’s own devastating foundation.

Rafael Nadal retires from tennis

Rafael Nadal’s return position weakened his opponents’ strengths and allowed him to impose his own. (Jason Heidrich/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)

Nadal’s initially belittled deep return position neutralized opponents with bigger serves. It allowed him to start rallies where he could be favorite, while knowing his opponents would do little to counter this. That position, which Dominic Thiem also took early on, has now become fundamental for men’s tennis.

What all these evolutions have in common is movement, and that is where Nadal, alongside Djokovic, has mainly remade tennis. The return strategy, the baseline missiles launched with margin and the agility in the forecourt were supported by dazzling coverage of the court, whether he was running around his backhand again and again or shifting from a losing position to a winning position, with the movements of the gravel to new surfaces were converted.

While Djokovic was and remains the true master of sliding, it was the collective power of their innovations that tipped the scales away from the servers, forcing emerging players they encountered to not only dominate on serve, but also scramble and collect. . Daniil Medvedev is perhaps the most direct descendant of violence. That’s before we consider how the Nadal-Djokovic-Federer-Andy Murray nexus, which featured in so many semifinals and finals, made each other better while making everyone else look worse.

None of this means that Nadal is as naturally talented as Federer, nor as elastic as Djokovic. Nadal himself thought Federer was more blessed. His team agreed: his uncle and first coach Toni said in a telephone interview this week that Nadal had “a very good volley, but not a beautiful volley like Federer”.

Nadal was king of clay. His strength and will to win were hard to ignore. But to watch Nadal find seemingly impossible angles or lean into his backhand during the match was to see a master of his craft at work. A fighter yes, but also a genius.

(Top photo: Quinn Rooney/Getty Images)