Nadal Interview with marca,com

[britbox]

Roughly translated (not by me I must add!)

'The plan is to work and we are doing it a little bit different way than before. We're trying to find things that can help us to start the year having some chances. I'm happy for how I'm training and I hope the results will arrive. We're training on specific things we didn't take care in the last years: stay more inside the court, lose less meters. I already did it in Beijing and in Shanghai even if things didn't go perfectly. But I think that from now to the end of the year I've time to continue and to refine changes'.

'I didn't lose mental strength. I lost control of myself, of my emotions. I've more anxiety than the normal. I didn't lose mental strength because I'm working as always, actually more than before. I'm motivated and I work more because my body allows me to do it. How can I explain this anxiety? It's a series of circumstances. For many years I played under pressure. Last seasons have been complicated in terms of injuries. In 2012, when I was playing very well, I injured myself and I came back in 2013. That year was incredible but was fatal in terms of my physical state, I was playing always with so much pain. In 2014, when it looked like I was playing better, I had first the wrist, then the appendicitis and evertything contributed to raise my anxiety and make me feel like I have no control of my nerves when I was on court. I worked hard to find a solution and I found it. That allowed me to enjoy my practice and especially my matches".

'This year I had anxiety problems that didn't allow me to enjoy tennis, but there were also important matches that could have changed the dynamics. Am I far away do it? No, I am not. In Rio I was very close to reach the final and I lost a match that I shouldn't have lost against Fognini. I won Buenos Aires, I came to Indian Wells with good feelings and I lost into the quarter-finals against Raonic after having had three match points. I had the chance to reach a Masters 1000 semifinal with Federer and things may have changed. Then in Miami I suffered from anxiety against Verdasco. I started off well on clay in Montecarlo. Barcelona was a disaster. Once again I didn't have control of myself'.

'In Madrid I played a great tournament, and after coming back fit in Rome, into the quarter-finals, I lost against Wawrinka after being up 6-2 in the tie-break. Moments make things complicated. At Roland Garros I faced Djokovic and, despite the improvements, my level wasn't good enough. I won Stuttgart. In Queen's, where I had to be consistent, I came back to lose against Dolgopolov. I played very bad in Wimbledon but I didn't have control of my mind there. Before US Season, I won Hamburg. Against Feli, I lost 7-6 in the 3rd set. At US Open, I was up 2 sets to zero and 3-1. I analyze the year with all these misfortunes and I see that I'm fifth in the Race'.

For the first time Nadal responded to all criticism that have been said about him: 'Am I "dead"? I don't know If I'm already done, but I'm not very concerned about it. I go on my way, at the end these are all opinions and everyone is entitled to have his own opinion. Somebody is wrong, others says right things. It's part of life in general. Everyone has opinions and especially when you're on TV. They all are valid, but always when come with respect. And sometimes that lacked'.

In some press conferences Rafa said that journalists asked him the same thing over and over again: 'I said it in the right way. I didn't feel hurt or I never understood something in the wrong way. The reality is that many beatiful things happened to me during over these years and right now I am hearing some bad things, but that is not a problem to me. I know who I am and I know what I did. And I know what I have to do to keep going. When you try everything, you can't feel obliged to do more. Sometimes I say that all the opinions are valid if they're respectful'.

After losing in Wimbledon against Dustin Brown, John McEnroe said that Nadal should change coach. Rafa accepted different opinions as far as "people don't criticize more than the normal. When you've a good attitudine, you can say that a player is playing bad or is finished, but always with respect. When I retire I imagine that Toni to be in my box'.

And what if his fellow countryman Carlos Moya will enter in his team? "I've a very good relationship with Carlos and his opinions are and will be always valid. I don't know what will happen in the future. Things are this way and I'm happy. Nowadays I believe in what I have and I continue with what I have. I believe that me and my group are doing the things well. I do what I can do. I lived beatiful moments and now the bad ones have come, I accept that. It's not a tragedy and I think that I'm on the right path to come back to play at a high level. What type of level? I don't know. Will I come back to win a Grand Slam? I don't know. But I say also that, whetever happens, the most important thing is to be satisfied with myself, which is my case'.

Should he ask help to a psychologist? 'Well, if I hire a psychologist for my private life, I would not have to say it publicly. I never spoke about personal things publicly. I've a public life which is the sport one. Personal things are only for me. I wanna have a private life and If I hire a psychologist, I would do it for my private life.'

He is thinking about the next season, about Australian Open 2016: 'I don't know If I'll be at 100% in Australia, the world doesn't finish here. But if I keep practicing this way, in the next season things could go in a different way. Physically and mentally I feel better.Immediately after Melbourne, I will play Rio de Janeiro on clay and I will not defend the title in Buenos Aires. Technically I am playing only Rio, then I don't know if what we'll do'.

In London 2012, at the Olympic Games, was also scheduled to be the flag bearer for Spain at the opening ceremony. Would he like to do it again in Rio 2016? 'It doesn't depend on me, but I could be the flag bearer, I would like to. I lost many important tournaments due to injuries compared to other rivals that haven't withdrawn from Grand Slams, Masters or Davis Cup Finals. But the Worst thing was to skipping London. First of all because Olympics take place every 4 years, and then because being Spain's flag bearer gave so much hope'.

Does he think that despite winning 14 Major, 4 Davis Cup Titles and Olympics Gold Medal, he has to play 3 Davis Cup ties to be elegible to play in Rio? The Spaniard must play another tie and could still not play at the Olympics. 'Someone makes up the rules and these are there to be respected. I don't know well how rules work to qualify. The reality is that for some reason from 2012 I couldn't compete in Davis and I didn't play much ties due to injuries. There was also a bad environment and due to this we find in this situation (Spain is in Group I)'.

Spain has to line up one mixed doubles at Olympics. Would you like to play it with Garbine Muguruza? 'Yes, I would like to do it, but it's still far away. It's not official that I will play men's doubles with Fernando Verdasco. We started to play together some tournaments beginning in Montreal and now we'll see what happens'.

Rafa doesn't plan to become father in short time instead of Federer, Djokovic and also Murray on February: 'I don't think that my son will watch me playing, it's not in my plans. It's not something that would fascinate me. Everyone take his time. I'm a very familiar person, I like children, but for me having a family means have a more stable life. And now it's not like this since I travel a lot'.

Will it be a disappointement if he does't win another Grand Slam title? 'It can't be a disappointement after having won 14. If my career finishes today, it would be a career that I have ever dreamed of. It still allows me to keep enjoying tennis, I enjoy it right now.'

 

[mikecase]

Sounds like Nadal is too accepting.He needs to less pessimistic and stop offering himself a get out.

 

[brokenshoelace]

"I had the chance to reach a Masters 1000 semifinal with Federer and things may have changed"

Lmao. Couldn't help but smile at this one. Kieran would be proud of that quote.

 

[brokenshoelace]

That aside, it's a fascinating interview. Interesting to see Nadal go through the year virtually tournament by tournament in a very pragmatic way. Almost too pragmatic actually.

 

[britbox]

That aside, it’s a fascinating interview. Interesting to see Nadal go through the year virtually tournament by tournament in a very pragmatic way. Almost too pragmatic actually.

Yeah, he wore his heart on his sleeve a little during those transcriptions.  You wonder whether other players may see it as a sign of weakness.

 

[brokenshoelace]

Broken_shoelace wrote:
That aside, it’s a fascinating interview. Interesting to see Nadal go through the year virtually tournament by tournament in a very pragmatic way. Almost too pragmatic actually.

Yeah, he wore his heart on his sleeve a little during those transcriptions. You wonder whether other players may see it as a sign of weakness.

I think his results are such a big sign of weakness that how he looks at them is irrelevant, from other players' perspective.

 

[ClayDeath]

Rafa is a spent force. we all have to live with that.

 

I am his greatest fan on this planet. and I also know exactly what he is doing.

 

it is all cosmetic. cosmetic talk and cosmetic practice sessions.

Sampras had this right and if you Camelot then we had it right there years ago.

we called. I called it. I said what was going to happen and it did.

more on this later. Rafa brought about his own demise. nobody shut Rafa down. this is the man who had a winning record against 100% of the top 30 players.

more on this later. I will explain exactly what happened and why it was destined to happen this way.

 

[Moxie]

I read the original interview in Spanish, which is in a Q&A format.  It does come off a little differently than the (as you admit) crap translation, BB, which is also a prose distillation.  I'll try to give a better one, at least of the cogent points, when work permits.  He says a lot of what your translation says, but it does read somewhat differently in context, in order of questions, etc.

 

[Moxie]

Rafa is a spent force. we all have to live with that. I am his greatest fan on this planet. and I also know exactly what he is doing. it is all cosmetic. cosmetic talk and cosmetic practice sessions. Sampras had this right and if you Camelot then we had it right there years ago. we called. I called it. I said what was going to happen and it did. more on this later. Rafa brought about his own demise. nobody shut Rafa down. this is the man who had a winning record against 100% of the top 30 players. more on this later. I will explain exactly what happened and why it was destined to happen this way.

Hi, Clay Death!  Good to see you.  Look forward to hearing more.  Glad to see the old optimism is still in place.  

 

[brokenshoelace]

Clay Death good to see you here! Good to see you also brought your selective memory with you... You've been wrong about clay warrior plenty of times my man.

 

[DarthFed]

He certainly has mastered the art of making predictions after they've occurred.

 

[ClayDeath]

Actually it is all documented at Camelot. as early as 2008 and 2009 one with a keen eye for his game could see what was going to happen. it is not rocket science.

he failed to improve, progress, and innovate and ultimately it would cost him. The world caught up with him.

and now he does not feel like putting in the very long and hard yards on the fitness front and on the practice courts.

he says stuff like he knows who he is and what he has done. Sampras has this right. He is out there playing like he is retiring from the sport.

he spent  an immense amount of physical and mental capital in winning all his matches. it had to take its toll at some point.

 

that being said he still had it in him to snag 2 more RG crowns. He should not have left that on the table. he could have put in the effort.

more on this later.

 

 

[DarthFed]

Well eventually all great athletes wither.  Father time is undefeated.  Now if you predicted in 2013 or even 2014 that he would have as terrible a year as he's had in 2015, that's different from the obvious prediction in 2008 that he would eventually decline.

I do agree with you though that while he made improvements to his game he has not done enough to compensate for his loss in physicality.  The serve never became a consistent weapon as it's only been great on rare occasion. And he has not shown the ability to end points quickly with his forehand.  He needs to flatten it out more.

 

[ClayDeath]

My prediction at the end of 2008 is not so obvious. He played and won more matches than anyone alive on the hard courts in 2008.

i knew that would land him the crown in Australia in 2009. In fact Patrick Rafter and I predicted that he would win the Australian Open in  2009. Note that brad Gilbert did not. Brad said that it was Roger who was playing his best tennis. He would pick Roger.

at any rate I knew that Clay is the wellspring from which Rafa flows. His 46 clay titles spell that out even for the idiots.

i knew that his infatuation with hard courts would cost him his competitive advantage on clay. He would go on to install an indoor hard court for himself in Mallorca.

i also knew that it would lead to significantly more injuries.

he just could not get himself to back off a little bit from the hard courts. He still can't.

 

bottom line: he can't win on any surface unless he dedicates himself to clay again. he has about 30 percent of his ground game left. and he has given up nearly 50 percent of his fitness and his physicality.

that is too tall a mountain to climb at this point. he can do it but he is not going to.

to get an idea of the dramatic drop in his ground game just look at this simple fact: he won just 10 percent of the points from the baseline against berdych at the Australian Open.  Rafa had always been a tough customer at slams where you get best of 5 sets format.

more on this later.

 

[brokenshoelace]

Clay Death, equally documented was your recommendation that "clay warrior should skip the rest of the year" in 2013 after he lost at Wimbledon, including missing the US Open, because "I know the clay warrior better than anyone, old sport." Luckily, Nadal knew himself a little better.

 

[ClayDeath]

Clay Death, equally documented was your recommendation that “clay warrior should skip the rest of the year” in 2013 after he lost at Wimbledon, including missing the US Open, because “I know the clay warrior better than anyone, old sport.” Luckily, Nadal knew himself a little better.

 

go ahead and produce that post.  nobody said that.

you are a damn liar. it is really pathetic that you have to keep stooping this low time and again to take a cheap shot at me.

 

the title of this forum says "discuss tennis" . it does not say take cheap shots at people.

you are not in my league so back off moron.

I was also the first to say that Andy Murray was going to win Wimbledon in a year that he did. again it is all at Camelot.

and I was the first one to say that roger was going to try to go after 100 titles. sure enough reporters approached him to ask him that very question long after I predicted that roger will shoot for 100 titles.

you will find this at my Roger Federer thread at MTF.

Rafa did well on clay in 2013 if you will recall. nobody on the planet said that he should skip the rest of the year after that loss at Wimbledon.

I said very specifically in 2013 that he should back off a little bit off the hard courts after winning the u.s. open.

he did not and it cost him. by the time he got Melbourne, he was ready to hit the wall and he did.

I said it was futile to chase the rank at that point and it was. look where it got him. it effectively ended his career and his domination of the sport.

he had done more than enough in 2013 and top rank was meaningless. what was far more critical was showing up healthy, fit, fresh, and prepared for the Australian open.

his body hit the wall against Wawrinka. ultimately he would sustain 2 more injuries in 2014.

 

it is high time you start lying to people because I can produce the my posts but you cant produce a post--any post by anybody for that matter--where somebody said he should skip the rest of the year after his loss at Wimbledon.

also I don't feel like discussing this with a liar so beat it.

 

[ClayDeath]

By all my own calculations Rafa is done. It is the end of a brilliant career where he firmly established himself as one of the greatest ever to the play our sport.

 

He is just going through the motions at the moment. and he is doing as little as possible. he is simply too inactive as it relates to tennis and his fitness.

guys like Courier and few other true insiders of the sport are not wrong. They just have to be respectful as they spell out what is going on with Rafa. He is an all time great.

Rafa just does not care to fight , battle, and compete to death anymore to win.

so that is 3 massive obstacles that he has to overcome:

1. He has lost his ground game
2. he has significantly diminished fitness and also dramatic drop in his physicality
3. and the loss of his relentless will, drive, and hunger.  The fire from within does not burn anymore. That is really where it all starts.

 

 

[Moxie]

I read the original interview in Spanish, which is in a Q&A format. It does come off a little differently than the (as you admit) crap translation, BB, which is also a prose distillation. I’ll try to give a better one, at least of the cogent points, when work permits. He says a lot of what your translation says, but it does read somewhat differently in context, in order of questions, etc.

OK, the distillation is not so bad, and it's not worth an entire transcript, but I'll quote this one directly, as it differs a bit:

"Q:  You have seen Roger Federer buried before his time. Is Nadal being buried before his time?

A:  I don't know if they've buried me before my time, but it doesn't bother me a lot, either.  I go my own way, and it doesn't bother me if they bury me or not. In the end, they're just opinions and everyone is welcome to his own.  There are people who are wrong, and people who guess right.  It's just part of life in general.  In life, everyone has opinions, and even more when you're on television.  All opinions are valid, but always with respect.  And sometimes the last part is what's lacking."

Rafa doesn't say that some are wrong and some are right.  The word in Spanish he uses, "acierta," sort of means 'to be right eventually,' with a hint of luck in it.  Make enough predictions, and you'll be right eventually, especially about the demise of an athlete.  Rafa asks for these comments to be made with respect.  And I'm not sure where the one giving an opinion, having so much ego involved in it, is actually giving respect to the athlete, as much as feathering his own (forum?) nest...insisting on the need to be right, even superseding the efforts of the player, who is a real person.   (Yes, I'm looking at you, Clay Death.)

Overall, I agree that the interview is unusually candid about his dealing with anxieties in matches, which is certainly not something you hear athletes talk about in public.  Let's be honest, Rafa can be an odd cat, and his tennis, as well as his approach to fame is very sui generis.  No way to know what the rest of the season or 2016 will bring for him, but he says he's making progress, and feels optimistic.  I'll buy into that.

 

[ClayDeath]

he is done. this is not rocket science.

I am also not into blind worship. I am his greatest fan on the planet but I am not going to blindly worship him.

he brought about his own demise. and now the window is just about 97% closed. only about 3% chance that he can catch the horses out in the front.

only difference between him and borg at this point is that he left without leaving and borg actually exited the sport.

both put a lot on their plate but borg's burn out was mental. he stayed fit to his last day. there were no endless and recurrent injury issues with borg.

endless injuries took their toll on Rafa but in the end he simply decided to give up the hunt.

Rafa is the greatest physical specimen our sport has ever seen so he could have easily overcome his injury issues.

he chose to just walk away from the sport. no other all time great has ever suffered such heavy casualties on their very best surface right in their primes. he flat gave up the fight and the hunt just about right in his prime.

he walked into Paris and said he does not want to win 15 RG titles. he also said it does not matter if he doesn't win since he has already won it so many times. the greatest clay court player of all time gave up on his own home turf.

these are the facts and my eyes don't lie:

numbers don't lie either. numbers are cold as death itself.

1. he is at about 30% capacity with his ground game. you saw him take just 10% of the rallies against berdych in Melbourne. berdych? really? since when he had not owned berdych on every surface known to mankind except when he was a kid. he owned berdych.
2. fitness is not there to compete with the best. he cramped  badly and threw up after his straight sets win over fognini in hamburg. and it was actually relative cool in hamburg. that is after just sets. he also had a very easy semifinal win.
3. dramatic loss in physicality. he does not have the physical strength he once had. about 1/2 of it is gone. roger and djokovic are stronger than ever because they never miss a single day with their work on fitness. they are hitting the gym more than ever to maintain their physical strength and to even improve it.
4. the fire from within no longer burns. it is what it is but the true insiders of the sport see all this. it is his life and his career so he is doing what he wants to. and he wants to do it his way.

this is not a new revelation. he dropped his work on his game and his fitness after the win at flushing meadows in 2013. this has been going on for a while. exactly why he backed off the hard work after the title win in new york is not clear. perhaps the mental and physical capital expenditure but he backed off a little bit. and then he would go screw around with djokovic in south America doing a series of exos for $10 million.

I believe that is where he made a mistake. he should have managed his time better and prepared for the title run in Melbourne. that title had his name written on it if only he could manage this training and fitness which he failed to do. so he showed up in Melbourne with less than optimal training and fitness and sure enough it would cost him.

he won because of his lethal topspin based on superior movement and superior physical strength. and it was all backed by his relentless will to win. uncle tony called his relentless will his greatest asset.

 

more on this next time.

he and his team has to say the right thing for their millions and millions of fans and all those sponsors. and they have to try to put a positive spin on the state of affairs.

what is clear is that he cant win any titles on any surface given his current levels.

he cant catch the top players unless he goes and gets on clay and find his ground game again and also starts putting in massive effort on the fitness front.

in these depleted levels of fitness and physicality the chance for injury is great right now and he knows that.

 

more on this later.

 

 

 

[Billie]

Well if Nadal weren't such a physical tennis player, he wouldn't have won half of the titles that he did.  So if I were his fan, I would have been a very happy one thinking that he did great on other surfaces except clay.  You can't run your legs and knees until they give up and not have consequences later.

Anyway I don't think Nadal is done.  He usually has one year up and the next down, for most of his career, or has one part of the season very successful and then the other half not so much, or not playing at all.  But he can push it for a few months easily and win a big tournament, I don't doubt that.  We'll see, I guess.