Rafael Nadal: the King of Clay – Tennis Special (Part One)
World number two, Rafael Nadal, is entering into the final stages of his favourite clay court surface season and his ultimate test starts next Monday when he begin his Roland Garros French Open title defence. He will be up against
the top ranked players in the world and tennis fanatics are up for another exciting Grand Slam tournament after witnessing a mind blowing Australian Open at Melbourne in January.
Before the Spanish number one commence his seventh French Open title hunt in eight years, I would like you to learn something about this superhuman. Something from his childhood; a backlash of his stupendous past that will tell
you how he moulded into a exceptional tennis player over the course of years.
Nadal picked up the racquet for the first time at the age of three and started training at the age of five. His uncle Toni Nadal is with as a coach ever since his childhood and still trains him during the practice. He is the one
who has transformed an innocent kid into a world class athlete. It was a difficult task but he took the responsibility and I think he has been honest to his work. Whatever the Spaniard has achieved, he owes that to his uncle.
The Spaniard’s family was related to sports one way or the other so it was natural to him. However, his forefathers were into football. His uncle, Miguel Angel Nadal was the professional Barcelona player and Spain’s International.
The mystery behind the Spaniard’s decision of choosing tennis as his profession is still unresolved; probably it just happened to him.
Considering that his family had football blood, it was obvious that he would shoot some goals in his career. I’m not kidding; he did scored a century of goals for his club in the local junior league. He is a classic football player
as well and plays the sport to relax in his leisure time. Real Madrid is his favourite team although he owned the shares of Mallorca club for a long period of time; probably because it’s his home team. He was born, raised and still lives in Mallorca.
However, the Spaniard was training too hard for his tennis with Uncle Toni that he was benched for most of the matches by his coach; not because he was a bad player but he was not reaching the football practice sessions on time.
He stated that he used to practice until after dark and had a very tough physical conditioning programme. This is why is so tough to beat at any level; never gives up on a point until it’s over and the point is not over until he says it’s over.
One aspect that I love about his game is that he respects his equipment a lot and he has learned that from his coach c*m uncle. He has never broken a racquet ever in his life and will not do that because he has been trained in
such a fashion that he absorbs all sorts of frustrations and never allows the anger to take over his thought process.
(continued in Part Two)
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