Rafael Nadal has always been seemingly invincible on the tennis court and endearingly vulnerable off it. The 22-time Grand Slam champion, who arrives for a video interview from his home in Mallorca, Spain, is also a tired father, trying to catch up on sleep after the birth in August of his second son, Miguel.
After transforming and defining the sport for two decades, Nadal retired from tennis last year. His first son, Rafael Jr., is starting infant school just as Nadal and his wife, Maria Francisca Perelló, adjust to their new arrival. They live in Mallorca and both grew up in the Mallorcan town of Manacor, first dating 20 years ago when they were teenagers.
“I want to spend time at home,” he said. “I postponed a lot of things to the end of the season because of the baby, and then I have to work.”
Nadal, now 39, made his final farewell to tennis at Roland Garros, where he finally had a proper goodbye from the sport at the place where he won 14 Grand Slam titles. There has been a statue of him there since 2021, and there is now a plaque with his footprint on the Court Philippe-Chatrier clay. Various other events tried to say goodbye to Nadal last year, but either didn’t quite get the tone right or were given short shrift by a fading champion who wasn’t in the mood to look back or celebrate his achievements.
“I am not a guy who is … I am a little bit too shy for all these things. Roland Garros was the right place,” he said.
Nadal found 2024 a real struggle, as he desperately tried to rewind the clock, but his creaking body refused to cooperate. Aged 38, he called it a day, playing his final match in November, a loss in the Davis Cup to Botic van de Zandschulp of the Netherlands. Injuries meant he hadn’t been truly competitive for a couple of years.
Nadal hasn’t picked up a racket since retiring.
“First of all, because after my retirement, I was very bad in terms of pain in my foot,” Nadal said about a foot that was a chronic issue during his career and had to be numbed to allow him to win the 2022 French Open, his last Grand Slam title. “I had very big difficulties to walk for a month.”
He started to feel better, but “didn’t yet have the motivation to come back on court.” The plan is to do so this month or next because he does not want to forget how to play tennis.
Less than a year into retirement, Nadal doesn’t have a fixed routine. He goes to the gym a few mornings a week, plays golf two or three times, picks Rafael Jr. up from nursery, and plays with him when they get back. There are meetings with sponsors; the Rafa Nadal Academy; his foundation; hotels; even a supplement company.
Players rising from Nadal’s academy are starting to make strides in the game, such as 20-year-old Alexandra Eala of the Philippines, who reached the second round of the U.S. Open last week and the Miami Open semifinals in March.
More established players are always welcome to train. World No. 3 Alexander Zverev was one such player this summer. He told the Nothing Major podcast: “The intensity that Rafa played at, that is the intensity he coaches at. It was unbelievable. We had dinners until 1 a.m. together, and in the middle of dinner, he would stand up and do swinging forehands and show me what technique he wanted me to improve on. It was unbelievable how into it he was.”
He still follows the sport, but the travel involved rules out full-time coaching. “I have too many things in my life that for me are more important today,” he said. “I like tennis, I like other things, too, and I want to enjoy this moment of my life.”
But tennis will always be his passion. Not because of the titles he won, or his part in the rivalries that made men’s tennis so culturally relevant in the 2000s, but because of something more visceral. “Sport is all about emotion,” he said.
It is impossible to reflect on Nadal’s career without considering his biggest rivals: Roger Federer and Novak Djokovic, with whom he made up the Big Three of men’s tennis. They won 66 Grand Slam titles, forming the most formidable and long-lasting oligopoly in the history of tennis and arguably any sport.
During his Paris farewell, the moment that resonated the most with many was when those two and Andy Murray, “an amazing rival, too,” joined Nadal on court. That the four were able to treat each other with respect throughout years of fierce competition, even when there were “higher and a little bit lower moments in terms of relationships,” is what Nadal wants his and their legacy to be.
Saying goodbye with them was “a very deep personal feeling.”
“Before that, I was at peace, after that, the same, but I was very happy to receive such a beautiful moment,” Nadal said.
He is convinced that he wouldn’t have won the titles he did — 92 in all, plus Olympic gold medals in singles and doubles, and five Davis Cups — without his rivals pushing him on. He believes the Big Three would each have broken Pete Sampras’ record of 14 Grand Slams without the others, but the eventual numbers they posted came from an internal fight to stay atop the leaderboard. Federer was first to break it, before being overtaken by Nadal, who in turn was usurped by Djokovic.
“We never had time to relax,” Nadal said. “We need to push all the time to the limits to compete in that era. When I was practising, I was practising to improve by myself, but at the same time, you have these clear rivals in front.”
He was constantly looking to improve by assessing what Djokovic and Federer did better than him. In a bruising 2011 season, Djokovic won three of the four Grand Slams and beat Nadal in six finals. Two were majors, at Wimbledon and the U.S. Open, while four were at Masters 1000 events, one rung below the Grand Slams. Nadal didn’t beat Djokovic all year.
“I knew after that year that I had to add things to my game,” he said. “So that kind of thing reflects how challenging the situation was. So at the end of the season, I said, ‘OK, what do I have to do to try to have better chances against him — especially on the hard courts?’ And talking with my uncle (then-coach Toni Nadal), with the rest of the team, we made a plan and a goal of the things that I need to do to have better chances.”
To beat Djokovic, he “needed to be more aggressive and have a higher quality ball with my forehand when I was going for the winner. That was my goal.”
Having originally been the second man in his rivalry with Federer, Nadal was used to the experience of figuring out how to beat someone ahead of him, but less used to another tennis superhuman doing it back to him. Nadal’s dismantling of Federer’s single-handed backhand is well-known, and he went 3-0 against him in major finals in the 2008 and 2009 seasons, before claiming three of the four majors in 2010.
“In some way, having players like Novak or like Roger in front gives you a clear way about the things you have to do,” Nadal said.
And after Nadal lost the 2012 Australian Open final to Djokovic, in an epic that lasted almost six hours, he beat him three times in a row at the Monte Carlo Masters, Italian Open, and French Open. The following year, he started to beat Djokovic on hard courts — at the Canadian Open and the U.S. Open — but he didn’t win so much as a set against him in their remaining eight meetings on the surface.
With so many injuries throughout his career, Djokovic on a hard court was Nadal’s ultimate challenge. “I needed my body and my physical performance to the highest level to compete against Novak on a hard court,” he said.
“Roger was able to cut the points very fast with his serve, but Novak and me, our games are closer. He was better than me on hard without a doubt, but until 2013, 2014, I was able to compete against him the proper way.
“Then later, when you have a lot of issues in the body, you lose a little bit of confidence in the movement. You start avoiding things that you feel you can’t do like before, because you feel that if you do this kind of thing, you can be injured. The mental part of that had a huge impact against Novak. I needed this extra energy in terms of movement, in terms of bringing my game and my body to the limit. And I was not able to produce that anymore.
“I was able to create more damage on other surfaces like grass, but needed to create this super-long battle in terms of physical demand. It’s not about playing long, I was able to play for a long time, it’s about the movement that I need to do to push him to the limit.”
Nadal ended his career with a 29-31 record against Djokovic and 24-16 against Federer.
Rivalries constantly evolve. The leading men of 2025 are Jannik Sinner and Carlos Alcaraz, and the absence of a third man is a reminder of the uniqueness of the Big Three. They have won the last seven majors between them and are on course to meet in a third major final in a row on Sunday. That would leave them one away from the Nadal vs. Djokovic record of four from that 2011 to 2012 period. Sinner faces Félix Auger-Aliassime Friday night, while Alcaraz is up against Djokovic earlier in the day.
Nadal gets on well with both men and is in semi-regular contact with his compatriot Alcaraz. Like every tennis fan, he was gripped during their five-and-a-half-hour French Open final in June. As a 14-time winner, Nadal had a unique perspective.
Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic during their last meeting, at the 2024 Paris Olympic Games. (Tim Clayton / Corbis via Getty Images)
“The match was unbelievable because it was super emotional at the end,” he said, before immediately taking emotion out of the picture.
“For me, the first three sets were not that high-quality tennis. It was a normal final. Then, fourth and fifth sets were a high-quality fight. That’s from my point of view, talking about if I had to play against them. The fourth and fifth sets were super, super high-level tennis, emotional, had a little bit of everything.
“Before, for me, I think Carlos didn’t play at his level. From my perspective, I think he was a little bit wrong tactically.” Nadal didn’t want to expand on that tactical element.
“Jannik, of course, he was unlucky up 0-40, but when he had the chance to go for it, I think he was not playing with the right determination,” Nadal said.
“I think he stopped doing what he was doing good — going for the shots and playing with this extra speed on the ball at the moment that he had to take advantage. He didn’t play as aggressive as he was doing before.
“But overall, if we put the full picture, the final was unforgettable. It was amazing. The end of the match was one of the most emotional that I saw and I was lucky to see that as a fan from home,” he said, with no yearning to be on the court instead of on his sofa. “I am not there anymore. I changed my mind after my retirement. I accepted 100 percent of my new life.
“Of course, as a tennis player, I’m not only watching the match, I try always, but I am analyzing things. That’s something that I can’t avoid yet, but it’s not that I wish I was playing the match.”
Evaluating the two players, Nadal singles out Sinner’s improvement with his serve and points to the way that “he puts a rhythm on the forehand that is very difficult to follow. He’s very quick on picking the ball early and he’s quick on the transition from defending to attacking.” Nadal can see improvements in feel and touch on the horizon, which are two of Alcaraz’s best skills.
“Carlos is more magic, he’s more unpredictable, he can play at a level that probably sometimes Jannik cannot,” he said.
“But at the same time, he’s making more mistakes, too — he can play better, but he can play worse, and it’s about finding the balance. Carlos has all the shots, sometimes he’s making mistakes, but he’s going for the shots and it’s more amazing to see because at the end it’s more unexpected and unpredictable. I like it, it’s very funny to see Carlos play because he’s able to produce amazing things and at the same time, he’s able to have mistakes, and that’s human.
“From my point of view, Carlos can improve a little bit the tactical way to approach some matches. Sometimes it feels like he always plays for every big shot, and sometimes, he doesn’t need that much.
“That’s why I’m interested in how they evolve, because I think both of them have room to improve, and they are so good.”
The constant drive for improvement defined the Big Three, and nowhere is that clearer for Nadal than at the U.S. Open. He won four titles, making it his second-best major, but it started as his least favorite. He found the Arthur Ashe Stadium so windy in its pre-roof days that his serve, not a major strength anywhere at that time, could be a liability. He worked hard on the shot to get it in shape for New York, as Alcaraz has done this year, and he won his first title there in 2010, completing the career Grand Slam in a city that he felt an affinity with even when his tennis did not suit it.
“I was a very emotional and intense player, a passionate player. So I felt very close to that amazing energy that New York produces, and the night sessions especially were unforgettable.”
Nadal tweaked his game for grass, too, and even excluding his 14 French Opens, he still won eight majors — as many as legends such as Andre Agassi, Jimmy Connors and Ivan Lendl won in total.
Rafael Nadal won his last U.S. Open title in 2019. (Matthew Stockman / Getty Images)
While surfaces required changes to his game, the conditions and dimensions of a place can also be decisive. Court Philippe-Chatrier’s vastness of space suited him perfectly; Arthur Ashe’s vastness of height less so. At the Cincinnati Open, the main tournament ahead of the U.S. Open, he won the title once but suffered in the humidity and even just the court conditions.
“For some reason, you have places that you find yourself well and are comfortable. New York, at the beginning, I was not that comfortable. I worked hard to change that feeling and I achieved that feeling. At the end, I felt great every time I arrived there.”
Nadal has few regrets about his career, bringing his “mentality to the limit during a lot of moments of my career, playing and, a lot of times, winning.” He looks back on the period between 2012 and 2016, when pain in his knees from patellar tendonitis made playing at Wimbledon almost impossible, as a missed opportunity. Nadal was a two-time Wimbledon champion, who considered grass to be a more natural surface for him than hard courts, but in that time, he missed one tournament and lost early three times. He recovered to have deep runs in 2018, 2019 and 2022.
He then turns away from tennis and toward his other great sporting love: Real Madrid. “We are Real Madrid, why not?” He said in response to the idea of them winning the league, then taunting Arsenal’s lack of trophies upon being reminded of them knocking Madrid out of Europe.
He recalled Murray, an Arsenal fan, winding him up about that defeat. “He’s an asshole,” Nadal said, laughing, as he did when asked if he could one day be the Real Madrid president.
“I don’t think so, but maybe — you never know in the future, you never know, and we need to wait for that.”
A conversation that started with sharing notes on babies’ sleeping habits ended with a look ahead to the upcoming football season. Nadal, one of the greatest athletes of all time, is settling into his new life.
(Top photo: Dante Badano / SIPA via Associated Press)
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