Rafael Nadal Was a Different Kind of Superstar, and Changed Tennis Forever

Humility can be a rare occurrence in sports, but Nadal deployed it as a superpower, charging to 22 major titles in a never-to-be-replicated career.

Nadal retires from professional tennis with 22 major titles and an Olympics gold medal. / Erick W. Rasco/Sports Illustrated

It sat there on the corner of the tennis court, existing idly, a sort of plastic buoy set adrift in a blue ocean. Rafael Nadal had finished a practice session—taxing, as ever—at the 2008 U.S. Open. He headed off, grabbing a bag full of his gear, but absently leaving behind a bottle of Evian water.

Back in the locker room, Nadal realized he had committed a grievous unforced error. The infraction: littering. But really, it was something more. He had left open the door to a cardinal sin of arrogance, or the appearance thereof. To Nadal, there was no greater violation of the social compact than thinking you were better than anyone else.

So, though he was mid-sentence, talking with characteristic cheerfulness to two journalists, and though he was back in air-conditioned comfort, Nadal couldn’t abide by this lapse. Nadal bent down, tied up his Nikes, and then, with all the blazing intensity he brings to bear when he plays, he dashed back out of the locker room. Once he had sprinted down a walkway, he re-entered the practice court, grabbed the bottle and disposed of it in a recycling bin. Mission accomplished.

Nadal was 22 years old at the time. He was the No.1-ranked tennis player in the world. Weeks earlier, he had won the gold medal for Spain at the Beijing Olympics. Weeks before that, he had taken down the mighty Roger Federer to win Wimbledon for the first time. Weeks before that, he had won the French Open for the fourth straight time. At this U.S. Open, he was the top seed, the player of the moment, the favorite to take the title.

But, damn, if he were going to give off the impression that he was the kind of guy who didn’t pick up after himself.

Nadal, who announced his retirement from tennis today at age 38, achieved plenty more since then. Lacing his lefty shots with a mix of joy and rage, competing with a burning light that never flickered, he would win 22 career major singles titles, currently two behind Novak Djokovic and two ahead of Federer on the all-time list. He would take 92 singles titles, more than $135 million in prize money and easily 10 times that in endorsement income. He would win another Olympic gold medal in doubles.

Through it all, he would remain remarkably unchanged. For the entirety of his career, he competed with ferocity, even mercilessness. And then, as soon as the match ended, he carried on—virtually always—with relaxed grace. Inverting the usual model of jock bravado and toughness, Nadal would stand for the proposition that humility and even self-doubt can be just as powerful a motivator as supreme self-belief.

Nadal turned professional in 2001 at just 15 years old. / Simon Bruty/Sports Illustrated

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Even for a sport that traffics heavily in phenoms and next-big-things, that throws around the anvil of expectation as if it were weightless, Nadal was a next-level prospect. It didn’t hurt that Nadal was more like a fantastical creation than a sports prodigy. Yes, he was torrentially talented. But his game and his backstory were both sui generis, a unicorn’s unicorn.

Nadal was Spanish, but that was misleading. He didn’t come from the mainland that had produced various stars; but, rather, from Mallorca, a Mediterranean island resembling a tennis ball lobbed in the direction of Italy. Mallorca was the provenance of the world’s recent No.1 player, Carlos Moyá, but otherwise had little tennis history. Nadal would forgo the fancy academies in Barcelona and Madrid—to say nothing of the ones an ocean away in Florida—and learn his licks on the local courts.

His coach? The trustee of this appreciating asset? His father’s kid brother, a curious, seeker type, who spoke German, read voraciously and openly questioned religion; but “Uncle Toni,” as he’d come to be known universally, was not a man with much of a tennis résumé. And one of his first moves entailed teaching his young right-handed nephew to play tennis left-handed.

Apart from the flinging, zinging, topspin-heavy strokes, Nadal was physically precocious. Not unlike a contemporary in another sport, LeBron James, Nadal had the body of a man while still a teenager. With much fanfare, he turned pro in 2001 and wasted little time clearing his throat and announcing his presence. He was 16 when he beat Moyá in the Hamburg tournament, a passing-of-the-torch match. On a sultry night in Miami in ’04, Nadal, then 17 and ranked No. 34, faced Federer, the defending Wimbledon champion and world No. 1. In a bit of foreshadowing, Nadal’s high-bouncing lefty shots found openings against Federer’s one-handed backhand. Nadal won that encounter 6–3, 6–3. Few would have predicted it was an overture to a symphonic rivalry, the first meeting of 40.

In what would be another bit of foreshadowing, Nadal would miss the 2004 French Open with a foot injury. Nadal vs. Federer would make for one durable, back-and-forth rivalry. Nadal versus his own body would make for another. His full-bore style was often devastatingly effective. It was also often deployed to the detriment of his full physical health.

But by the following spring, Nadal, still a teenager, was back to winning events by the boatloads. So much so that Sports Illustrated dispatched me to Europe to see this kid in action. The assignment: is he, possibly, as good as advertised? In halting English, Nadal was his own worst critic. He was quick to stress that he had yet to win the biggest events. He was quick to downplay the expectation, noting that he had abundant weaknesses.

I recall asking American doubles star Bob Bryan if he thought all this Nadal hype was justified. He didn’t hold back. “It’s a frigging joke what a beast this guy is,” he said. “I would bet anyone right now. He is the future.” Nadal won the tournament that week, taking the decisive set of the final 7–6, his will every bit as precocious as his skill. The story ran with the headline “Come Se Dice ‘Real Deal’?”

Never having played—much less win—Roland Garros before, Nadal arrived at the 2005 French Open as the favorite. He fulfilled the prediction, winning seven matches. How cute: he won the tournament the same week he celebrated his 19th birthday. Who knew this would become a rite of spring that would repeat itself more than a dozen times? In the end, Nadal would win a preposterous 14 French Open titles, more success at that event than any other tennis player in history ever had at one tournament.

Nadal won his first major title at the 2005 French Open, defeating Mariano Puerta in the final. / Bob Martin/Sports Illustrated

Merely dominating on clay, though, wasn’t going to fulfill Nadal. You play a sport to become No.1 overall, not No.1 on one surface. The morning after winning the 2008 French Open, he boarded the Eurostar—declining an offer of a private plane—and headed to England for grass court preparation. Four weeks later, he won his maiden Wimbledon. In January 2009, he won his first Australian Open, defeating Federer. At the trophy presentation, as Federer leaked tears, Nadal comforted him with a hug. In 2010, Nadal took the U.S. Open, and suddenly this alleged clay-court specialist had won each of the four majors before turning 25.

No amount of success, though, could make inroads against his essential nature. Here was the rare athlete who became more accessible and knowable as he got more famous (and, critically, more comfortable with his English). Ferociously as Nadal competed, the instant the match ended, his intensity melted away and transitioned into the picture of insouciance.

And Nadal leaned into humility, even weaponizing it. Every opponent represented a potential threat. Every match he won, he was quick to attribute the outcome to “luck” or “a few points here or there.” “Do you consider yourself the favorite?” Nadal was inevitably asked. Before the entire question could be completed, Nadal would wave his hands, rejecting the premise.

To the uninitiated, it sounded like false modesty. Your winning percentage at the French Open is north of 95%, and you’re not the favorite? Really, dude? You have won more than 1,000 matches in your career, and you were ‘lucky’ to escape with a win?

But to Nadal, any admission of superiority would have been a sign of weakness, not strength. As he once explained it to me, “If we have no doubts, it means that we are the arrogance … So for me, living in constant doubt is good, because it means that we have to ask things of ourselves. We have to wonder, is this right? Is this wrong? What I'm hearing here, is it true? Or are they trying to convince me of something? Doubts are good.”

Doubt—served him particularly well in his battles against Federer. Theirs marked one of the great sports rivalries of all time. It had the unique feature of lacking in enmity but, otherwise, was a classic study in contrasts. Lefty versus righty. Trench warfare versus surgical strikes. Balletic versus brutal. A debonair citizen of the world versus a proud man of the people, who would rather be wearing sandals and a T-shirt than a black tie. They were identical in height and weight (6'1", 187 pounds) but had markedly different body types.

Nadal had pulled off one of the great tennis takedowns, beating the mighty Federer seven of the first 10 times they played. He could easily have proclaimed himself the best. But, convinced that Federer was, fundamentally, a better player and might soon catch up—neither supposition unreasonable—Nadal continued working on his game, practicing fanatically, always looking over his shoulder.

Soon it was not just Federer but Djokovic who came to challenge Nadal. Younger, steadier, pricklier and trickier as an X’s and O’s matchup, Djokovic posed a more severe threat. In the end, Djokovic would oppose him more times than Federer (60), make more inroads (31–29) and deprive him of more titles.

Then again, perhaps not. Nadal had the good sense to realize that rivalry and challenge worked to his benefit, not detriment. The motivation that came from getting pushed by colleagues was a career extension. With his punishing, full-throttle style—it was Andy Roddick who remarked, perfectly, that Nadal had “a weird ability to make tennis look so easy and so hard”—and the various injuries it engendered, Nadal might well have retired years ago if it weren’t for the competition. The doubt sustained him.

Nadal won the Australian Open and French Open in 2022, the last major titles of his career. / Erick W. Rasco/Sports Illustrated

His best years came in his 20s, when his body was at its freshest, not least in 2010 when he won three of the four majors. One can say safely that his death-taxes ritual success at the French Open—14 titles in 17 years; a downright goofy 97% winning percentage—will never be replicated by another player.

But you could argue Nadal found his greatest success in 2022. Coming off a severe foot injury that wrecked his ’21 season (and, for good measure, coming off a case of COVID-19) Nadal, then 35, began that year on the brink of retirement. He gave it a go in Australia, the only member of the Big Three. Federer, then age 40, was out of action (and would never return), while Djokovic, firm in his refusal to get a COVID-19 vaccination, would end up being deported. Nadal took advantage of the opportunity and won the title—his 21st.

In the process, almost by default, he became a sort of moral force in the sport, a role, he had in the past, happily yielded to Federer. Suddenly, Nadal was the adult in the room. And, just as tennis needed him most, he warmed to it. He weighed in on politics. He gave lengthy, contemplative press conferences. He owned the room. And quite liked it.

The extra year also gave him time to prepare for life after tennis. His eponymous academy in Mallorca—a short drive from his childhood home and current estate—is already one of the world’s premier tennis training academies. Nadal has invested in restaurants and resorts. In the fall of 2022, he became a father for the first time.

Then, inevitably, his body began another insurrection. He missed three of the four majors in 2023. It was equally fitting and sad that with Nadal absent from the French Open, Djokovic used that as an opportunity to win his 23rd major, supplanting Nadal and setting the all-time men’s record.

Perhaps it was even more fitting that Nadal faced Djokovic in his last significant singles tournament, falling to his rival 6–1, 6–4, at the 2024 Paris Olympics. Nadal announced in a video message that he will officially retire after the Davis Cup Finals in November in Spain. “It is obviously a difficult decision and one that has taken me some time to make," Nadal said. "But in this life, everything has a beginning and an end.”

The sport was better for his presence. It will be diminished in his absence. On this point, there can be no doubt.