Why his resignation is the right decision · tennisnet.com

Yes, we would have preferred to keep Rafael Nadal on the tennis tour forever. But his resignation is the right thing to do – and the location for the final performance might not be suitable. 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 initiated cancellations of planned tournament starts. And Nadal has said “Hello” more and more often in recent years.

Yesterday, Thursday, he canceled forever. Rafael Nadal ended his tennis career at the Davis Cup Finals from November 19th to 24th, 2024. After 24 years on the tour, after 92 tournament wins with 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 turns from the moment 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 won twice, certainly due to the slowing down of the surface and the balls, but above all to 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 has become too slow

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 it apart from himself. But: Watching Nadal was painful for tennis 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 had started promisingly in Brisbane, but Nadal was injured 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 between 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 revealed a lot here.

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

Finding the perfect or at least good ending: It’s not easy for many professionals. Roger Federer had made it with the last hurray at “his” event, the Laver Cup. Andy Murray struggled to get to Wimbledon and the Olympic Games this year and played memorable doubles there. Nadal, one recently had the feeling, may have missed the moment.

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

20 years later, Malaga will celebrate its Spanish matador at least as powerfully. And the tennis world sheds big tears of farewell.

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