Rafael Nadal on post-retirement goals, promoting tennis in Saudi Arabia and his ATP Finals regret

Many years ago, Rafael Nadal sat down with his father Sebastian, who asked him how he envisioned his life after his retirement from tennis.

“He asked me what I want to do after tennis, if I want to relax and enjoy life or want to keep working and do things?” Nadal told The National in an interview in Jeddah last week.

As a 22-time Grand Slam champion who dedicated three decades of his life to tennis and made more than $130 million in on-court career earnings – not to mention his wide portfolio of endorsement deals – Nadal would be forgiven if he chooses to spend the rest of his life relaxing with his family, fishing, and golfing, now that he is freshly retired at the age of 38.

But the Spaniard always knew he wanted more. “My answer was, no, I don’t understand my life without having goals,” he told his father back then.

“Of course I want to enjoy the family, the friends, and it’s true that I worked a lot since I was a very, very young kid, so I want my time to enjoy life. But I understand that in this life it’s important to have motivations, to have goals, and that’s why I have already prepared my future.

“I was very lucky that I have a great family, a great team around me that prepared my future with the [Rafa Nadal] academy, with of course different projects with my foundation that we are doing a great job helping a lot of families.

“And I am very excited about this new chapter in my life. It’s just very early to talk about it because I just stopped playing tennis one month ago but I am very, very excited and I am just now organising my future.”

Part of Nadal’s future involves helping promote tennis in Saudi Arabia as an ambassador for the Saudi Tennis Federation, a role he took on back in January.

Nadal's career highlights – in pictures

Last week, he spent three days in Jeddah immersing himself in the tennis community in the Red Sea city, and learning more about Saudi culture.

He attended the Next Gen ATP Finals at King Abdullah Sports City, took part in daily meet-and-greets, engaged with hundreds of kids in tennis clinics, took part in the award ceremony of an under-14 Asian tennis tournament, met the Saudi Davis Cup team as well as a group of junior wheelchair players, spoke at a coaches’ conference, and lots more.

It was Nadal’s third visit to the kingdom – and first time in Jeddah – and he is still learning more about the tennis landscape there.

“For me, it’s an opportunity, first of all, to know a different culture,” said Nadal of why he decided to become an STF ambassador.

“Second, to promote our sport in a region that is really growing in that regard. And in some way, as a tennis ambassador, we have the obligation to promote our sport around the world. And this is a region that is opening to the world in recent years, so my goal and my motivation is to bring tennis to the new generations.

“It’s to bring the message that being in the world of sport, you’re going to grow with positive values. You’re going to learn a lot about how to be prepared for your future life, because sport is a very important learning [tool] in all ways.

“So in some way, my message, and the way that I want to be remembered here, is as a person that is here to help the new generations to practise and play more and more tennis.”

Nadal is no stranger to the Middle East.

He played in the Dubai Duty Free Tennis Championships for the first time in 2004, and made his Qatar Open debut in Doha a year later. He participated in almost every edition of the Mubadala World Tennis Championship in Abu Dhabi between 2009 and 2021, and earlier this year, competed at the Six Kings Slam in Riyadh, where he faced his long-time rival Novak Djokovic for the last time before retiring from the sport.

He also opened a branch of his academy in Kuwait in 2020.

News of his latest tie-up with the STF was not warmly received by everyone when it was announced in January, but Nadal is not shying away from any criticism that has come his way, and says he believes in what he is trying to achieve in Saudi Arabia.

“We are in a free world and people can talk about anything. But in some way, it’s important that the people, when they talk about things, it’s important that the people have the chances to visit the places, to know the real thing of the places,” he explained.

“I am lucky, that because of my sport, I have been able to know all different cultures, so probably I have a different vision about the world in general than the people who don’t have the luck to visit all these places around the world.

“And because of that, because I saw all the realities in the world I think I was able to see things with a different perspective.

“So I accept the critics, especially I respect the critics who criticise things while respecting other people. When they don’t respect, it’s a different story.

“But I really, in some way, at the end of the day, I know when I make the decision that’s going to be happening. But in some way I don’t care that much if I really achieve the goal that I want to achieve here. In the end it’s to improve the life, promoting sport in this country.”

Nadal has witnessed first-hand the development of sport in places such as the UAE and Qatar and hopes to help instigate a similar effect on tennis in Saudi Arabia.

“If I am able with what I am doing and what I’m going to do here, improve and bring more kids to the world of tennis and to the world of sport, that’s my goal and that’s my motivation. And then if I’m not able to make that happen, then of course I will say to myself, OK, I got criticised and maybe they were right,” he added.

“But if I achieve my goal, maybe they’re going to be wrong and I’m going to achieve the goal and what I set out to do by being here. So, I don’t care that much. I’m just focused on doing things the best way possible, stay focused on the journey, and then let’s see.

“From experience, I see all these places, like Dubai, that I was there a long time ago, Doha, Abu Dhabi, Kuwait, and I see here the opportunity to create something beautiful for the people, and I’m excited about it.”

Nadal played the last professional match of his career at the Davis Cup Final 8 in Malaga last month after a lengthy battle with injuries that has forced him to hang up his racquet.

He got to bid farewell on home soil, after a loss to the Netherlands’ Botic van de Zandschulp, and admitted in his retirement speech that he wasn’t tired of tennis, but his body was.

Five weeks on from that final match, Nadal is at complete “peace” with himself. “I was ready for it. It’s important I was 100 per cent ready,” he said of that moment in Malaga.

“The last year and a half have been very tough in terms of not being able to practise and compete on a regular basis and to the standard that I am used to. So I tried my best until the last day.

“I just did the surgery in my hip to try to keep going but it simply didn’t work as good as I needed it to be to keep going. But I’m 100 per cent at peace with myself that I tried my best until the last day, to have success, and to stay with calm with myself that I did all I could do to be very well satisfied with myself.”

The Mallorcan will go down in history as one of the biggest fighters and greatest competitors in all of sport but perhaps his most underrated asset was his ability to accept adversity and find ways to navigate it.

In a conversation he had with some of the Next Gen players in Jeddah last weekend, he spoke about how he managed to win many tournaments without playing his best, because he accepted he wasn’t able to find his A-game and chose to do the best with what he had at the time.

He accepted his injuries, his rivals, and his shortcomings, and avoided having extreme reactions to both victory and defeat.

“At the end of the day, things that you cannot control, you cannot control,” he said. “You can be sad, you can be angry, but at the end life continues and it’s about trying always to be happy, accepting what you have in every single moment.

“I really think that I had a very positive example, with my family next to me. Honestly, I really accepted all the challenges of my tennis career, in terms of injuries, in terms of bad moments, and accepting that then it’s easy to survive and to come back with motivation, with passion, and that’s what I did. Accept how you are today and just work on how you will be tomorrow.”

For a man who has achieved everything in tennis, from Grand Slams to Olympic gold medals to Davis Cup titles – it’s virtually impossible to pick a hole in his resume. But prompted to reveal the one trophy he wishes he could have won during his career, Nadal said: “Of course I would like to have won the ATP Finals one time, that’s probably the only important event that I never won. But that’s it.

“I was a little bit unlucky that at the end of the season I was not in my best shape physically. A lot of time with injuries. Then I had very difficult rivals in front and I played all my career ATP Finals in indoor fast courts, on indoor hard, and at the beginning indoor carpet.

“But nothing to complain. If you ask me what I would have liked to win, of course I would love to have one of these. I had my chances; I was not able to convert them. That’s fine.”

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