Rafa Nadal He has not wasted a minute of his time in his new life after retirement and, in addition to the management of his companies and projects, he has saved time for reflection to write his most sincere letter in his own handwriting: the gift. The text was published this Tuesday in The Players Tribune and in it he summarizes the best and the worst that he has had to live in his career, a path in which he even considered stopping to “cleanse his mind.”
His memories start with an anecdote that he lived when he was 12 years old, when the day before an important game he decided to go fishing, his great passion, rather than training. The next day he lost the match, but gained a valuable lesson. “On the way home I was crying in the car and my uncle, who at that young age had a great influence on me and who made me fall in love with tennis, said to me: ‘It’s okay, it’s just a tennis match. Don’t cry now, it doesn’t make sense. If you want to fish, you can fish. No problem. But then you will lose. What if you want to win? If you want to win, first things first,” he remembers.
From there his mind began to change, although that young man without great idols soon found his guide in Carlos Moyá. “My heroes were people I knew in real life (…) But when I was 12, I had the chance to play with Carlos Moyà for the first time. A Spanish compatriot, also Mallorcan, Roland Garros champion and the first Spanish player in become number one. I was a little nervous just to play with him. It was an unforgettable experience, a window to another world. For me, tennis was going from being just a fun, a child’s game, to being a real goal. It made me dream a little more,” he reveals.
But Rafa not only tells about the beauty, he also tells about the first time Mueller-Weiss Syndrome made him cry. “You go from the greatest joy to waking up the next morning almost unable to walk. I spent many days at home crying, but it was a great lesson in humility and I was lucky to have a family who have always been and are very close to me in everything (…) but fortunately, after a lot of pain, surgeries, rehabilitation and tears, a solution was found, and during all these years I was able to resist,” he thanks.
“Always push the limits and improve: That’s how I became a better player”he says after remembering his successes on tracks all over the planet. It seems that Nadal has always been able to do everything, but he himself admits that he has also suffered the nerves and pressure of a normal person. “That feeling of inner fire, the nerves, the adrenaline of going out and seeing a full court, it is a very difficult feeling to describe. It is a feeling that only a few can understand and I am sure that it will never be the same now that I am leaving. retiring as a professional,” he describes.
“Fortunately, I didn’t get to the point of not being able to control things like anxiety, but all players go through times of difficulty controlling their mind and when that happens, it’s difficult to have full control of your game. There were months when I thought about taking a complete break from tennis to clear my mind“, he assures before finishing with his most important lesson.
“In the good times I never believed I was Superman and in the bad times, I never thought that everything was a disaster. What makes you grow as a person is life itself: the defeats, the nerves, the pain, the joy, the process of waking up every day and try to be a little better to achieve your goals,” he concludes.
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