Louisa Thomas writes about the tennis player Rafael Nadal’s impending retirement and his legacy of courage.
In 2011, when he was twenty-four years old, after overtaking Roger Federer for the No. 1 ranking the year before and winning three straight Grand Slams, he told Sports Illustrated that he had never been in a fistfight. “Never,” he emphasized. “I get very scared.” But the experience of watching Nadal is of watching a brawl, at least on his side of the court. No one in tennis, or perhaps in all of sports, is more associated with fighting.
The clay season, which has been, for two decades, his season, was a kind of farewell tour, but infirmities disrupted even that. The highlight had been an emotional sendoff at the Madrid Open. Then he lost to Alexander Zverev in straight sets in the first round of the French Open. Djokovic and both of the tournament’s eventual champions, Carlos Alcaraz and Iga Świątek, had been in the stands, maybe less to watch the match than to pay respects.
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