After his first-round victory in Flushing at the 2022 US Open—his first since being forced to withdraw from Wimbledon with an abdominal tear—Rafael Nadal explained his approach to the game: "You need to be humble enough to go through this process and accept that you need to fight and you need to accept that you are going to suffer. That's what I did today."
In a nutshell, that is Nadal. Equal parts warrior and Zen master.
One of the fiercest competitors tennis has ever seen, Nadal is also famously modest, considerate, and empathetic. He has always been methodical, but lately—as a 36-year-old veteran who has played through pain and adversity for much of his career—he is particularly willing to speak about lofty topics that are more out of the playbook of a Buddhist monk than your typical athlete.
Listen closely to Nadal’s post-match remarks and analysis and you will hear what The New York Times once called the “Tao of Rafa.”
Acceptance of one’s fate, focusing on the moment, and willingness to suffer are all keys to Nadal’s personal philosophy—and success.
Some doubted Nadal would be healthy enough to play the US Open. Would he have to retire from a major yet again? “Retiring is, in my opinion, much tougher than [losing]. That's the thing, no? Sports is about winning or losing, not about retiring,” he said at the start of the year’s final major. “When you retire, you can't compete. The feeling is much worse than losing a match, no?”
Since 2004, Nadal has missed 11 Slams and had to pull out of five more because of a surfeit of injuries. The Spaniard recognizes how they have handicapped him over the course of his career, but he accepts that injuries are simply beyond his control.
Nadal accepts what he cannot control and focuses instead on what he can. More than anything else, that means the effort he gives: How he prepares, how hard he plays each point, how indefatigably he fights, how he works to improve—those are the elements that Nadal has control over.
And the 36-year-old accepts that everything will not always be in his favor.
“There are going to be days that things are not going the right way,” Nadal said earlier this summer. “It’s all about the process. Trust the process and at the same time, trust in myself that even the things that are not going well today can be better tomorrow, and better and better every single day.
In his second-round match on his return to Flushing after a two-year absence, against Italian Fabio Fognini, Nadal played a mystifying set-and-a-half. “I don't understand yet how I started that bad because the feeling before the match was good,” he said. “These kind of things sometimes happen so need to accept and keep going.”
No matter the adversity, Nadal never panics. He remains centered and calm.
“I stayed there. I was positive,” he said. “Even if the disaster was huge, I was not too frustrated. Just accepting the situation, staying humble enough that I don't consider myself too good to not accept a lot of mistakes.”
Nadal is almost monastic in the way that he accepts his circumstances and sublimates the ego.
After completing perhaps the greatest comeback of his career in the final at this year’s Australian Open, Nadal spoke not of strategy or how hard he fought, but of inner peace. "It is important to have true inner humility, not false humility, accepting that it's not always good, bad moments are better tolerated.”
"People sometimes exaggerate this business of humility," he said at the 2008 US Open, despite it being a word he returns to frequently. "It's a question simply of knowing who you are, where you are, and that the world will continue exactly as it is without you."
A decade ago, when he had collected “only” 11 major titles, Nadal revealed what could be his tennis thesis. “To improve, you have to have mistakes,” Nadal says. “That is the problem with improving. You have to accept that problem.”
"People sometimes exaggerate this business of humility. It’s a question simply of knowing who you are, where you are, and that the world will continue exactly as it is without you."
While the tennis world may obsess over major titles and debate who is the GOAT, Nadal doesn’t engage in comparisons. “You can’t always be unhappy because your neighbors have a bigger house than you or a bigger boat or have a better phone,” he said at the 2020 French Open. “You have to live your personal life, no? Personally, that's the things that I did during all my career. Just try to follow my road, try my best every single day.”
Nadal’s on-court focus is legendary. Perhaps more than any player, the Mallorcan possesses an uncanny ability to immediately let go of errors in a match and reset.
His focus extends to the tiniest details. Anyone who has seen Nadal play has surely noted his idiosyncratic routine on court. He precisely places his water bottles and towels at each changeover. He goes through exact, fastidious motions before every serve. These aren’t mere superstitions or what many might assume to be obsessive-compulsive disorder.
“It’s a way of placing myself in a match, ordering my surroundings to match the order I seek in my head… When I do it, it means I’m focused,” Nadal has said.
Rituals are a way of ordering one’s life and grow character, believed the fifth-century BCE philosopher Confucius, who is believed to have always carefully straightened his mat before he sat down.
Some contend that Nadal-like rituals have applications in other fields. Even physicians have turned to the Mallorcan’s on-court philosophy, suggesting that surgeons use rituals to enter a deep-focus state and better visualize medical procedures.
After all, Nadal is a master of visualizing his tasks. And philosophical about his career, should it be nearing its end.
Capturing his 21st major title at the Australian Open at age 35 found the Spaniard, unsurprisingly, reflective. “One of the keys for me to continue playing tennis...is that I have tolerated success and failure equally. Nothing is that big and nothing is that bad; there are good times and bad times. Emotionally, you have to keep a middle line."
"I always say and believe that everything can be improved.”
