Rafael Nadal simply loved playing tennis | 60 minutes

When Rafael Nadal retires from professional tennis next month, the sport will lose a lot.

It will lose a powerful athlete whose explosions on the court were always about sending tennis ball-shaped torpedoes flying over the net – not about breaking the racket. Absent in the future will be the kind of obsessive player whose mid-game rituals were obvious to even casual fans, as was the effort he put into every point of every game. Tennis will say goodbye to a man whose humility remained unshakable even as he won two Olympic gold medals and an incredible 22 Grand Slam singles titles, including an extraordinary – and probably unrepeatable – 14 on the red clay of Paris.

And it will be a farewell to a tennis player whose childlike love of the game never waned, even as he changed the sport itself.

After more than two decades in professional sports, countless injuries – and just as many comebacks – Nadal announced Thursday that his final tournament would be this year’s Davis Cup, where he will play for his native Spain next month.

Over the past two decades, 60 Minutes correspondent Jon Wertheim has seen it all; He has covered Nadal for Sports Illustrated and the Tennis Channel since the tennis phenom was 18 years old.

In 2019 for 60 Minutes, Wertheim met Nadal in his hometown on Mallorca, the Spanish island where he was born and still lives. The two had a long sit-down conversation that was unusual in the tennis circuit: It took place in Nadal’s hometown, not at a tournament, not when he had a match the next day, not when he was thinking about hitting backhands.

In this conversation it became clear how much love Nadal had for his sport.

“I never felt like what I did was a sacrifice,” Nadal told Wertheim through a Spanish interpreter. “I trained, yes. I worked very hard, to the maximum, yes. But I enjoyed every single thing. To me, sacrifice means doing the things you don’t like doing. But I did it.” all the things I like to do.

60 minutes in December, the weeks that equate to tennis’ off-season. But instead of using the time to rest before starting a new season, Nadal worked hard, refining his southpaw forehand and double-fisted backhand.

Wertheim watched as Nadal went through his morning workout with his trademark energy, catapulting balls off his racket with an urgency usually only seen in matches. His relentlessness served him well on the pitch. It also took a toll on his body.

“I am very happy that after all the physical problems that I have had to suffer throughout my career, which are very numerous, I am happy to be where I am, namely 33,” he told Wertheim in 2019 . “This is something that I value and that gives me great personal satisfaction.”

Over the years, Nadal experienced a number of physical injuries and occasionally took long periods of time off for rehab. Each time he seemed to prevail and return to the top of his game.

In some ways, fighting through adversity is what Nadal Wertheim said he liked most about tennis itself.

In his 2019 interview, Nadal said he enjoyed the “mental strain” of the game, the search for solutions when behind in a set and the analysis required to change the dynamics of a match. When he lost, he wanted to understand what went wrong, to analyze how his opponent played better that day.

When he came from behind to win, he found the victory even more satisfying than, say, beating a competitor in straight sets.

“Because you put in extra effort,” he said. “That means you have the chance to compete again the next day. And you’ll play better the next day. Sometimes when I’m in the first or second round and I’m not playing well, I say: Okay, just accept it. Don’t be frustrated. Just accept it and focus.

Concentration was a key element in Nadal’s game. To block out distractions – from the crowd, from his opponent, from his own head – he has developed rituals that he performs every game. He told Wertheim that he spoke to his coach about an hour before the game started. Then he thinks to himself as he prepares the handles of his clubs and his physical therapy wraps. Just before he leaves the field, he steps into an ice-cold shower.

Even on the court, every serve is preceded by a routine. Nadal steps forward and shifts his weight to his right foot while adjusting the back of his shorts. Then, as he methodically dribbles the ball with the stick in his left hand, he tugs at the shirt sleeve on his left shoulder with his right hand and then with his right. He quickly wipes his nose before tucking the hair behind his left ear, then repeats on the right side – wiping his nose, tucking hair. After a final wipe of each cheek with his wrist sweatbands, he’s ready to serve.

Then, back in his spot on the sidelines, there are the water bottles. He always places two bottles in front of his chair and lines them up one behind the other so that they point diagonally towards the playing field. He turns their labels inside out. Before the game and during player substitutions, he takes turns taking a sip before precisely putting them back in their place.

It may sound like superstition, but Nadal explained it was part of his way of ignoring distractions.

“If I don’t do that thing with the bottles, then I sit down, I could think about something else,” he told 60 Minutes in 2019. “If I keep doing the same things, it means I’m focused and I’m alert just thinking about tennis.

Wertheim witnessed numerous Nadal rituals in the two decades he covered the tennis star. When Wertheim first profiled Nadal for Sports Illustrated in May 2005, the Spanish teenager had yet to win a major. But Wertheim recognized the potential in Nadal’s passionate playing and writing: “[T]Everything here indicates that Nadal… has begun a long career at the top of the sport.”

And he did. Nadal entered the Association of Tennis Professionals’ top 10 that same year and spent 912 consecutive weeks in the top 10. He only dropped out of the top 10 in March 2023 after being sidelined for most of the season due to injury.

One of Nadal’s most lasting legacies will be his rivalry with Roger Federer. They found the net 40 times, played on European clay, hard courts just a few oceans away and on the grass of London. There, the two fought in one of the best matches of all time: the 2008 Wimbledon final, a battle that raged on the court for nearly five hours, not counting the two rain delays. In the end, Nadal defeated Federer, who had won the Wimbledon title for the past five years, ending Federer’s 40-match winning streak at the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club.

But this duo may be most remembered for their genuine friendship.

“We … know that this is a game,” Nadal said in 2019. “And there are many other things in life that are more important than a game, than a match. And of course there were some moments with more tension.” But like everything else in life, both [Roger] and I were very clear that interpersonal relationships are more important than rivalries in tennis.”

When Wertheim spoke to Nadal for 60 minutes five years ago, Federer had 20 majors. Nadal had 19. When he retires Next month he will leave the court with 22 – two more than his old friend and two less than the remaining member of the Big Three, Novak Djokovic. Of the three, Nadal may care least about his place in history.

And in 2019, he told 60 Minutes that he would be at peace whenever he returned his final serve.

“I’m not worried about retiring at the end of my career,” he said. “I just want to be happy and have as much fun playing as possible. And when I retire, I think fortunately there are a lot of things in my life that will make me happy.”

The video above was produced by Brit McCandless Farmer. It was edited by Scott Rosann and Sarah Shafer Prediger.