Why his resignation is the right decision · tennisnet.com

Yes, we wanted to watch Rafael Nadal play tennis forever. But his resignation is right – and his last appearance is fitting. A comment.

When Rafael Nadal opens a video on Instagram, Facebook and X with the words “Hola a todos,” it rarely bodes well. His “Hello everyone” usually initiates cancellations for planned tournament starts. And Nadal said hello more and more often in recent years.

On Thursday he canceled forever. Rafael Nadal ended his tennis career after 92 tournament victories, including 22 Grand Slam tournaments and 14 titles in Roland-Garros alone. Records, they say, are there to be broken; In the past two decades alone, supposedly safe long-term records have been surpassed by Roger Federer, Nadal and Novak Djokovic.

Almost everyone agrees that the 14 Paris titles will last for a very long time.

When Rafael Nadal came onto the tour, he was considered a pure clay court expert. They existed in the past. Most people always take some time out of the picture from the time they switch to grass in the summer until the next spring. The better ones were also competitive on hard courts. The really good ones often had one or two years in which they even won titles on the faster surfaces when everything was just right.

Nadal, and this was a first, stayed. Longer and longer. And more and more successful. At Wimbledon alone he looks twice, certainly due to the slowing down of the surface and the balls, but above all his ability to adapt and want more. Because a victory on the sacred turf was his real childhood dream. The 2008 final against eternal rival Roger Federer is considered the best match in tennis history.

Rafael Nadal makes the right decision

The fact that Nadal will now withdraw from the Davis Cup finals in November is a good decision – just as it is not anyone’s place to judge. But: Watching Nadal was painful for fans this year. 2024 was supposed to be his farewell year anyway, he had already announced that a year and a half ago when he took a long break to get fit again for all of his favorite tournaments.

The year started promisingly, with the semi-finals in Brisbane. But Nadal injured himself again and only played sporadically. He had little time to prepare for his big goal, the French Open. Because he had slipped so far in the ranking, he immediately lost to Alexander Zverev in round 1 and lost in three sets. But worse than the defeat was the realization: Nadal has become slower, he no longer comes out of the corners as quickly as he used to – or at least two years ago. And then ten, twenty, thirty centimeters are always missing. There are worlds in tennis. They make the difference whether you can still control the game or whether it is now controlled by you. Nadal’s matches against Zverev and Djokovic at the Olympic Games showed a lot here.

After the Olympics, Nadal took a break to think about his future. The farewell is only logical. “He could only have continued playing with restrictions,” said Nadal. And watching a top man get tormented from week to week by people he used to beat up is no fun.

With the end of his career at the Davis Cup finals in Malaga, at home in Spain, a circle closes. Nadal celebrated his first big victory in the Davis Cup in 2004: Spain beat the USA in the final; The 18-year-old Nadal, then still number 51 in the world, won against Andy Roddick in front of an ecstatic audience in Seville.

20 years later, Malaga will celebrate its Spanish matador at least as powerfully.

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