Nadal's Latest triumph @ Monte Carlo Rolex Masters tournament Nadal advances to the Semi-final match, Rafael will face Jo-Wilfried Tsonga.
Quaterfinals match between Rafael Nadal vs Grigor Dimitrov
Nadal's Interview after the Quarterfinal Match against Grigor Dimitrov
19/04/2013 - Good news today as Rafael won his match in the Monte Carlo Rolex Masters tournament quarterfinals posting a 3 sets win against Bulgaria`s Grigor Dimitrov, a 6-2, 2-6, 6-4 win. In the semifinals, Rafael will face Jo-Wilfried Tsonga.
Shirtless Rafael Nadal with his Lover Maria Francisca Perello
Rafael Nadal shows
off his shirtless ab-tastic body while hitting the beach with his bikini-clad
gal Maria Francisca Perello last month in Cozumel, Mexico.
The 26-year-old
tennis legend and his love were spotted getting massages, riding wave runners
and kissing in the sunshine.
Rafael
Nadal recently returned to pro tennis after taking 7 months off for a knee
injury. Glad to see he’s feeling better!
A man behind another man’s success – it’s an different story here
Antonio "Toni"
Nadal Homar(born 21 February 1961 inManacor,Mallorca) is aSpanishtenniscoach. Nadal is the uncle and coach of tennis championRafael Nadal, whom he has
coached to the top of the world rankings
My uncle Toni
was the resident coach at the tennis club in our home town, Manacor. The
clubhouse was what you’d expect in a town of barely 40,000 people:
medium-sized, dominated by a restaurant, with a terrace overhanging the clay
courts.
One day I
joined in with a group of half a dozen children Toni was teaching. I was
already crazy about football, playing on the streets with my friends every
spare moment my parents let me .
I liked being
part of a team and Toni says that at first I found tennis boring. But learning
in a group helped, and it’s what made possible everything that followed. If it
had just been me and my uncle, it would have been too suffocating. It wasn’t
until I was 13, when I knew my future was in tennis, that he began training me
on my own.
Toni was tough
on me right from the start, tougher than on the other children. He demanded a
lot of me, pressured me hard. He’d use rough language, shout a lot, he’d
frighten me — especially when the other boys didn’t turn up and it was just the
two of us. If I saw I’d be alone with him when I arrived for training, I’d get
a sinking feeling in my stomach.
My friend
Miguel Angel Munar reminds me sometimes how Toni, if he saw my head was
wandering, would belt the ball hard at me, not to hit me, but to scare me, to
startle me to attention.
It was always
me, too, who he got to pick up the balls, or more balls than the others, at the
end of the training session; and it was me who had to sweep the courts when we
were done for the day. Anyone who might have expected any favouritism was
mistaken.
Quite the
opposite. Miguel Angel says Toni bluntly discriminated against me, knowing he
could not have got away with it with him and the other boys but with me he
could, because I was his nephew.
My mother
remembers that, as a small child, sometimes I’d come home from training crying.
She’d try to get me to tell her what the matter was, but I preferred to keep
quiet.
Once I
confessed to her that Toni had a habit of calling me a “mummy’s boy”, which
pained her, but I begged her not to say anything to Toni, because that would
only have made matters worse.
Toni never let
up. Once I started playing competitive games, aged seven, it got tougher. One
very hot day I went to a match without my bottle of water. I’d left it at home.
He could have
gone and bought me one, but he didn’t. So that I’d learn to take
responsibility, he said. Why didn’t I rebel? Because I enjoyed tennis, and
enjoyed it all the more once I started winning, and because I was an obedient
and docile child. My mother says I was too easy to manipulate.
Maybe, but if I
hadn’t loved playing the game, I wouldn’t have put up with my uncle. And I
loved him too, as I still do and always will. I trusted him, and so I knew deep
down that he was doing what he thought was best for me.
I trusted him
so implicitly when I was little that I even came to believe he had supernatural
powers. It wasn’t till I was nine years old that I stopped thinking he was a
magician capable, among other things, of making himself invisible.
During family
get-togethers my father and grandfather would play along with him on this,
pretending to me that they couldn’t see him. So I came to believe that I could
see him but other people couldn’t.
So there was
fun in my relationship with Toni, even if the prevailing mood when we trained
was stony and severe.
And we had
plenty of success. If he hadn’t made me play without water that day, if he
hadn’t singled me out for especially harsh treatment when I was in that group
of little kids learning the game, if I hadn’t cried as I did at the injustice
and abuse he heaped on me, maybe I would not be the player I am today.
He always
stressed the importance of endurance: “Endure, put up with whatever comes your
way, learn to overcome weakness and pain, push yourself to breaking point but
never cave in. If you don’t learn that lesson, you’ll never succeed as an elite
athlete.” He did a lot to build that fighting character people say they see in
me on court.
There’s a fine
balance in the tension that my uncle’s presence in my life creates. Usually, as
the record shows, it’s been a positive, creative tension.
Sometimes he
doesn’t measure his words well and the effect is to sour, rather than to
enhance, my mood, which in turn impacts my game.
A trivial
example of the sort of thing I have to put up with would be this: we are at a
hotel somewhere in the world and we agree to meet downstairs in the car at a
certain time to go to training. He arrives 15 minutes late, but I don’t say
anything. But the next time I arrive 15 minutes late for an appointment, he
complains that we can’t carry on this way.
Another
example. During a match I’ll hear him say, “Play aggressive!” before a return
of serve . I’ll go for it, the ball will go out, and then he’ll say, “Now
wasn’t the moment”.
But it was the
moment; it just happened that I messed up the shot. If the ball had gone in,
he’d have said, “Perfect!” The atmosphere in our team is tenser when Toni’s
around than when he’s not.
What I never
lose sight of is that, on balance, that tension benefits my game. Nor do I
forget that he wouldn’t generate such a response in me, be it for good or for
bad, if I didn’t feel a tremendous respect for him.
When I am hard
on him, it’s because I believe he asks for it.
But one thing
must be clear: if we have fights, they are to be taken in the context of a
mutual trust and a deep affection built up over many years of being together.
Everything I
have achieved in the game of tennis, all the opportunities I have had, are
thanks to him. I’m especially grateful to him for having placed so much
emphasis from the very beginning on making sure I kept my feet on the ground
and never became complacent.
While Toni’s
refusal to let me off the hook has its value, in that he pushes me always to
improve and do better, it can also be bad because he creates insecurity.
I often feel
this way, especially in the early rounds of a tournament, and the truth is that
while he deserves credit for so many good things in my career, he also deserves
blame for me being more insecure than I ought to be.
The point is to
hold on to the lessons I’ve absorbed from Toni but to impose my own judgment
more, striving to find the right balance between humility and overconfidence.
Sure, you must
always respect your rival, always consider the possibility that he might beat
you, always play against the player ranked 500 in the world as if he were
ranked No 1 or 2. Toni has helped me to have this very clear in my mind, maybe
too clear.
What I am trying to teach myself now is to tilt
the balance the other way, to exercise more autonomy over my life and disagree
more openly with him. This may be a consequence, in part, of me seeing that
Toni has his doubts and insecurities too; that he contradicts himself often;
that he is not the all-knowing magician of my childhood
“ "The first guys we did were Sampras and Agassi. They were hitting forehands that in general were spinning about 1,800 to 1,900 revolutions per minute. Federer is hitting with an amazing amount of spin, too, right? 2,700 revolutions per minute. Well, we measured one forehand Nadal hit at 4,900. His average was 3,200." ”
— John Yandell, San Francisco-based tennis researcher
Federer and Nadal have been playing each other since 2004, and their rivalry is a significant part of both men's careers.
They held the top two rankings on the ATP Tour from July 2005 until 14 August 2009, when Nadal fell to world No. 3 (Andy Murray became the new No. 2). They are the only pair of men to have ever finished four consecutive calendar years at the top. Nadal ascended to No. 2 in July 2005 and held this spot for a record 160 consecutive weeks before surpassing Federer in August 2008.
They have played 29 times, and Nadal leads their head-to-head series 19–10 overall and 8–2 in Grand Slam tournaments. Fourteen of their matches have been on clay, which is statistically Nadal's best surface and statistically Federer's worst surface. Federer has a winning record on grass (2–1) and indoor hard courts (4–0) while Nadal leads the outdoor hard courts by 6–2 and clay by 12–2.
Because tournament seedings are based on rankings, 19 of their matches have been in tournament finals, including an all-time record 8 Grand Slam tournament finals. From 2006 to 2008, they played in every French Open and Wimbledon final, and also met in the title match of the 2009 Australian Open and the 2011 French Open. Nadal won six of the eight, losing the first two Wimbledon finals. Three of these matches were five set-matches (2007 and 2008 Wimbledon, 2009 Australian Open), and the 2008 Wimbledon final has been lauded as the greatest match ever by many long-time tennis analysts. They have also played in a 9 Masters Series finals.
Nadal vs. Djokovic
Djokovic and Nadal have met 33 times (which is the sixth-most head-to-head-to-head meetings in the Open Era) with Nadal having a 19–14 advantage. Nadal leads on grass 2–1 and clay 12–2, but Djokovic leads on hard courts 11–5. In 2009, this rivalry was listed as the third greatest of the previous 10 years by ATP worldtour.com. Djokovic is one of only two players to have at least ten match wins against Nadal (the other being Federer) and the only person to defeat Nadal seven consecutive times and two times consecutively on clay. The two earlier shared the record for the longest match played in a best of three sets (4 hours and 3 minutes) at the 2009 Mutua Madrid Open semi-finals until the match between Roger Federer and Juan Martin del Potro in the London 2012 Olympics Semifinal, which is the longest best-of-three-set match by time (at 4 hours and 26 minutes). In the 2011 Wimbledon final, Djokovic won in four sets 6–4, 6–1, 1–6, 6–3, for his first slam final over Nadal. Djokovic also defeated Nadal in the 2011 US Open Final. In 2012, Djokovic defeated Nadal in the Australian Open final for a third consecutive slam final win over Nadal. This was the longest Grand Slam tournament final in Open era history at 5 hrs, 53 mins. Nadal won their last three meetings in the final of Monte Carlo Masters, Rome Masters and French Open in April, in May and in June 2012, respectively
Nadal vs. Murray
Nadal and Andy Murray have met on 18 occasions since 2007, with Nadal leading 13–5. Nadal leads 4–0 on clay, 3–0 on grass and 6–5 on hard courts. The pair regularly meet at Grand level, with eight out of their eighteen meetings coming in slams, with Nadal leading 6–2 (3–0 at Wimbledon, 1–0 at the French Open, 1–1 at the Australian Open & 1–1 at the). Seven of these eight appearances have been at Quarter-final and Semi-final level, making the rivalry an important part of both men's careers. They have never met in a Slam final, however, Murray leads 2–1 in ATP finals, with Nadal winning at Indian Wells in 2009 and Murray winning in Rotterdam the same year and Tokyo in 2011. Murray lost three consecutive Grand Slam semi-finals to Nadal in 2011 from the French Open to the US Open. Amazingly, of the past 19 Grand Slam drawsheets, they have been drawn in the same half 16 times. The pair did not meet in 2012, having been scheduled to meet in the semi-final of the Miami Masters before Nadal withdrew with injury.
