Rafael Nadal, the passionate realist, retires from tennis

Rafael Nadal’s extraordinary career came to an end at this year’s Davis Cup Finals on an indoor hard court in Malaga, Spain—roughly 127 miles from where he exploded into our consciousness on red clay in Seville almost exactly two decades ago.

There, Nadal commanded the attention of the sporting world by defeating world No. 2 Andy Roddick, paving the way for Spain’s victory in that Davis Cup Final. Nadal was 18 years old at the time, and tennis was not the same from that moment on. In just six months’ time, the precocious left-hander would win the first of his 14 Roland Garros titles.

With his glorious career on the verge of guttering out, Nadal did not seek to stand triumphant one more time on a Grand Slam singles stage, as some have done and many hoped he might—perhaps at the 2025 French Open. He’s done that 22 times, and it’s been enough.

“OK, I can hold [on] for one more year, but why?” Nadal said at a press conference in Malaga, shortly before the start of his farewell tournament. “To say goodbye in every single tournament? I don’t have the ego to need that. . . I am not here to retire, I’m here to help the team win.”

The effort was futile. Nadal lost to Botic van de Zandschulp in Tuesday’s opening singles match, 6-4, 6-4, and the Netherlands went on to defeat Spain with a decisive doubles win.

Nadal, now 38, has been with us for so long (21 years of competition at the majors) that we have largely forgotten just how radical a presence he has been. Stroke and style-wise, the vast majority of players pop out of a similar mold. The ones who are truly idiosyncratic rarely ascend to the elite level. Nadal got there and, for some periods, dominated tennis.

Think back: when did tennis last produce an unconventional, top-level star? Was it Bjorn Borg? His own wrenching, topspin forehand and compact two-handed backhand also traveled well on clay. The Swedish sensation won six French Open titles. Do the math.

Nobody is teaching that radical Nadal game (good grief, he’s a right-hander in all activities but for tennis), but everyone ought to be preaching the Nadal mindset—the Nadal capacity for work, the Nadal humility and, above all else, the Nadal attitude.

Here’s what made Rafa great: He is a stone-cold realist. He never could abide over-complicated thinking or the rationalizations by which some live. The most trenchant bit of match analysis I ever heard was from Nadal’s mouth, when he was struggling in 2015. After losing a third-round match to Fabio Fognini at the US Open, he provided this precis:

“We can be talking for one hour trying to create a reason [for why I lost]. But the sport for me is simple, no?. . . If you hit the ball a bit shorter, the opponent has more space. If you hit the ball with a little bit of less confidence, then there is not as much topspin like there used to be. If you hit shorter, you will run slower—is not you run slower, but the opponent takes the ball earlier, so it looks like you are slower, no? Is easy to understand, easy to explain, difficult to change, but I going to do it.”

True to his word, Nadal recovered his mojo—not for the first, or last, time. But there’s one more bit to it. Nadal had something that realists often lack, or lose along the way. That is passion. His love for the game protected him from growing cynical or jaded, even after his body was pommeled by one injury after another.

Nadal is an athlete and a man composed of disparate, powerful elements. On court, the whole package was a force the likes of which we may never see again.