Oh, the age old question. What is Rafa? A servebot? A ballbasher? A pusher?
The truth is, no tennis player can play only one brand of tennis. To simplify it, you have to defend, you have to attack and god knows all the other technical details that us ordinary folk aren't aware of.
Clearly, Rafa's movement and dexterity have always been and still are, a strength. But someone who can watch matches like RG 2014 final or USO 2013 final and say that Nadal only defends, is simply an idiot. When he takes the ball early and is playing well, regardless of the surface, there aren't many guys who can even go toe to toe with him, let alone beat him.
Also, when he is playing well on clay, he is basically a ballbasher who htis with a ton of spin and can get every ball back in play. He is as aggressive, if not more, than anyone you can think of, from the baseline at least. Not someone you'd want to face.
Now here's the thing. He starts playing clay tennis everywhere. Because of the big windup on his shots, he likes to step back to take a bigger cut at it, but then the ball drops shorter and the opponent can attack it. This makes him look really bad. That is the curse of choosing to hit with that much spin. These days, he plays like a counterpuncher, and it truly saddens me that people forgot what kind of beast he really was.
Also his serve isn't something to write home about when you compare it to someone like Zverev who can hit aces on demand, but let's remember which one of them was an established top player and won RG at 19 and went on to have arguably the second most successful career of all time. Call him whatever you please.
