Nadal is not lacking in physical charm. A straw poll as to his attributes conducted among his many Spanish flag-bedaubed admirers yielded but one response: "It's the arms, stupid."
Men fatally underestimate this region of their anatomy. It is not that they should look as steroid-pumped as our boy's, more that they should inspire some notion of what it would be like to be encircled within them. Young Rafael's have the air of being an extremely safe space indeed.
His favourite film is – whisper it – Gladiator – and there is a certain Maximus Decimus Meridius appeal to his on-court thuggery. With his tree-trunk legs and frying-pan grip, he is the personification of brute physical prowess. One has to be pretty d**n fit to be crowned King of Clay – with all the dashing about that the surface requires – and Nadal has achieved this status with a barely contained machismo. Where other players gasp, he grunts, ripe with Neanderthal savagery. If Federer fences, Nadal annihilates,
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