Nadal quotes

HE's thread made me look at quotes from Nadal.
Here are some below...what strikes me is it any wonder this guy went on to succeed and overcome adversity as he's done? He probably would have succeeded at just about anything he chose to pursue with that iron will and mindset to endure and find the way to win.

"I am very, very keenly aware of how short the life of a professional athlete is, and I cannot bear the thought of squandering an opportunity that might never come again"

"It means learning to accept that if you have to train two hours, you train two hours; if you have to train five, you train five; if you have to repeat an exercise fifty thousand times, you do it. That’s what separates the champions from the merely talented. And it’s all directly related to the winners’ mentality; at the same time as you are demonstrating endurance, your head becomes stronger. The things you receive as gifts, unless they come with a special sentimental attachment, you don’t value, whereas the things you achieve by your own efforts, you value a lot. The greater the effort..."

"He won the next point after again rushing the net, this time with a finely angled, cut volley. I sprinted like hell, diagonally the whole length of the court, and almost got to it. It was good he saw me try; that would make him think twice the next time he tried a volley. It might force him to try too hard and make a mistake"

"Enduring means accepting. Accepting things as they are and not as you would wish them to be, and then looking ahead, not behind"

"If I have to hit the ball twenty times to Federer’s backhand, I’ll hit it twenty times, not nineteen. If I have to wait for the rally to stretch to ten shots or twelve or fifteen to bide my chance to hit a winner, I’ll wait. There are moments when you have a chance to go for a winning drive, but you have a 70 percent chance of succeeding; you wait five shots more and your odds will have improved to 85 percent. So be alert, be patient, don’t be rash"

"What you can never allow yourself is to fail because of a loss of will. You can lose because your rival played better, but you can’t lose"

"Because what I battle hardest to do in a tennis match is to quiet the voices in my head, to shut everything out of my mind but the contest itself and concentrate every atom of my being on the point I am playing. If I made a mistake on a previous point, forget it; should a thought of victory suggest itself, crush it."

“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"

"If you watch the number ten player in the world and the number five hundred in training, you won’t necessarily be able to tell who is higher up in the rankings. Without the pressure of competition, they’ll move and hit the ball much the same way. But really knowing how to play is not only about striking the ball well, it’s about making the right choices, about knowing when you should go for a drop shot or hit the ball hard, or high, or deep, when you play with backspin or topspin or flat, and where in the court you should aim to hit it."

"People sometimes exaggerate this business of humility. It’s a question simply of knowing who you are, where you are, and that the world will continue exactly as it is without you.”

"People get confused: they fail to grasp that you are not special because of who you are but because of what you do."

"I’ve seen reports in the news media saying that Toni forced me to play left-handed, and that he did this because it would make me harder to play against. Well, it’s not true. It’s a story the newspapers have made up. The truth is that I began playing when I was very small, and because I wasn’t strong enough to hit the ball over the net, I’d hold the racquet with both hands, on the forehand as well as the backhand. Then one day my uncle said, “There are no professional players who play with two hands and we’re not going to be the first ones, so you’ve got to change.” So I did."

"That’s tennis. You play a great point, you win with a fine shot at the end of a long and tense rally, but that has no more value in the final score than the gift of a point I gave him here. That’s where the mental strength comes in, what separates champions from near champions. You put that failure immediately behind you, clean out of your mind. You do not allow your mind to dwell on it."

"I don’t think there is anything in any area of life that gives you the same rush as winning in sport, whatever the sport and at whatever the level. There is no feeling as intense or as joyous. And the more you crave winning, the greater the rush when you succeed."

Wow! I can remember watching Nadal play for the first time but I can also remember watching him being interviewed. Was impressed at both.

I like "What you can never allow yourself is to fail because of a loss of will. You can lose because your rival played better, but you can’t lose"

If I get creamed 6-0 6-0 - no, that never happens, let's say 6-0, 6-1 to be realistic, I can be less unhappy than if I lose 7-6 7-6. It depends on how I play and how much I keep trying.

It's one reason why I've always been much better at doubles - I'm lazy enough to let myself down in singles, but my will is iron-clad to never let my partner down in doubles.

I don't know Julius. If you lose 6-0, 6-0 and you play really well against a rival that's a pro wouldn't you feel better than if you lost 7-6, 7-6 against me because you lost the will to run down yet another drop shot?

In singles, if I've played a 7-6 set, I'm usually happy to get off court as quickly as possible. If that means eating a bagel, then so be it

What I mean for doubles is that, if I've played well and tried hard, I'm usually happy, win or lose. Winning's a bit better, obviously, but if i play well and lose against obviously better players I'm happy just to have put up a good fight. Losing doesn't really matter.

I think that's similar to what Rafa said.

All straight forward statements and yet when you add all these words together there is a clearly man with a keen, pragmatic intellect and unreal desire and ability to endure struggle to win. How many other players would have 'endured' the same through all those injuries since having new orthotics fitted which immediately stopped him playing AO'06 through strain on his legs/knees? From then he's won 8 more slams even though the strain on his knees was building and building. On the other hand, his ability to endure has probably pushed him into serious injury more so than others might have wished to pursue. But had he not endured, he wouldnt have won those extra 8 slams and we wouldn't be talking about him, nor would he have been around to express these quotes that may yet inspire future generations of young sports stars to commit themselves fully to their sporting causes.

Interesting that a couple of you have picked out the same quote I noted - even for Nadal there is no shame in losing if you have played to the maximum of your ability on the day and the other guy has simply been better. The only difference between Rafa and the rest of us is that there are at most a handful of people in the world who on their best days and with the right conditions can beat him whereas there are thousands or millions that would beat us.

I've never minded losing to someone when I'm out-classed, and can take greater satisfaction in simply playing a few good points that I take even from winning against an easy opponent when I play poorly.

dummy_half wrote:Interesting that a couple of you have picked out the same quote I noted - even for Nadal there is no shame in losing if you have played to the maximum of your ability on the day and the other guy has simply been better. The only difference between Rafa and the rest of us is that there are at most a handful of people in the world who on their best days and with the right conditions can beat him whereas there are thousands or millions that would beat us.

I've never minded losing to someone when I'm out-classed, and can take greater satisfaction in simply playing a few good points that I take even from winning against an easy opponent when I play poorly.

I don't find it that surprising - you hear a lot of them say that such and such a defeat is not a difficult one to take because they were outplayed.

"If you watch the number ten player in the world and the number five hundred in training, you won’t necessarily be able to tell who is higher up in the rankings. Without the pressure of competition, they’ll move and hit the ball much the same way. But really knowing how to play is not only about striking the ball well, it’s about making the right choices, about knowing when you should go for a drop shot or hit the ball hard, or high, or deep, when you play with backspin or topspin or flat, and where in the court you should aim to hit it."

I found this one really interesting because in his press conference after the final he said that his shot selection was wrong because he panicked which was unusual. Just shows what a lot of thought goes into his tennis.

"So I got a little bit – I lost a little bit my calm, I think, and then I started to play with – I didn’t choose right the shots to change against his forehand, you know, to go inside the court. I think I was wrong in strategy for moments, something that for me is not usual, because normally I can have mistakes with the shots but with the tactics and the way how I have to manage the points, how I have to play the points, normally I am right."

Nice post PR, I think this shows that despite the physical side improving there is still room for Nadal mental side to improve also. The innate, automatic shot selection that comes from months of playing isn't quite there yet - he's having to do a lot of on the spot assessment/thinking still.

I said during the live match thread that Nadal was over-thinking and not making the right decisions. You could almost feel his cogs frantically going round by the end of the 1st set. During the 2nd set he clearly decided on a different strategy of placement and approach (aggressive) and the whole match turned after he started to hold serve more comfortably again putting all the pressure on Delpo. All we see is BHs and FHs when we watch a match but like an iceberg there's an incredible amount of mental work going on beneath the surface.

I think there is a certain irony in this following quote from Rafa´s autobiography ..bearing in mind it was written 2011 and he did not know then what he, and we know, now. He speaks of the injury he had back 2004/5.

"That period allowed me to absorb a lesson that all elite sportsmen and women need to heed: that we are enormously privileged and fortunate, but the price of our privilege and good fortune is that our careers end at an unnaturally young age. And, worse, that injury can cut your progress short at any time ; that from one week to the next you might be forced into premature retirement . That means, first, that you must enjoy what you do; and second that the chances that come your way won´t necessarily come your way again, so you squeeze the most you possibly can out of every opportunity every single time, as if it were your last"

I think we can see from that Rafa´s reasoning for playing IW when many of us thought he should stay with clay on his return. He took that opportunity and squeezed the life out of it.

I have to say (again ...!!) Haddie-nuff that IMO you - along with many others in fairness - were getting way too concerned & generally pessimistic as regards the likely prospects for Rafa ahead of his return.

I was posting back in December that he would be a threat to everyone and on every surface starting from whatever date he eventually set for the comeback.

And so it has proved.

Ok, you might say let's see what happens when he comes up against Djoko (or maybe Murray) but ..... for me all the signs are that Rafa is not about to make life easy for anyone.

It's not really surprising people were pessimistic about his return. In the beginning I was optimistic but then as he kept pulling out of more and more tournaments and didn't come back for Australia (which I think was a blessing in disguise) it makes you doubt, especially reading all the depressing reports from people like Wilander or Agassi who say it will take 18 months to get back to his best, if he can! But when it comes to Rafa when you think he can't he just goes ahead and proves you wrong.

The one avantage he's got at the moment is he's mentally fresh and playing with passion and joy which none of the others in the top 4 look like there doing at the moment. Federer looked in pain, Novak looked tired and Andy rusty.

It's human nature to play down hopes and expectations. We see a lot of that.

I have to say (again ...!!) Haddie-nuff that IMO you - along with many others in fairness - were getting way too concerned & generally pessimistic as regards the likely prospects for Rafa ahead of his return.

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I totally agree I did I wont deny it... "me of little faith" at that time.. I was very concerned for him knowing that he had been on the verge of retirement back in 2004/5 Im only delighted that you and he proved me wrong.. What more can I say

they're doing - didn't proof read

I always did say Nadal is a percentage player on the old 606. Of course I was told I was speaking rubbish and he is in fact just a talentless moonballer with a great pair of wheels.

It was, a brave, but in retrospect brilliant decision by Nadal to go after Federers back hand early on in their rivalry. In 2013, it seems an obvious decision, but in 2005, Federers game had no flaw. The forehand was liquid vapor, and I remember many pundits claiming his backhand to be a sumptuous flick. Took a serious belief in the plan for Rafa to stick to it.

kingraf wrote:I always did say Nadal is a percentage player on the old 606. Of course I was told I was speaking rubbish and he is in fact just a talentless moonballer with a great pair of wheels.

It was, a brave, but in retrospect brilliant decision by Nadal to go after Federers back hand early on in their rivalry. In 2013, it seems an obvious decision, but in 2005, Federers game had no flaw. The forehand was liquid vapor, and I remember many pundits claiming his backhand to be a sumptuous flick. Took a serious belief in the plan for Rafa to stick to it.

... and Federer helped in his own way by his own stubbornness. The aging process is another aspect of it.

Djokovic showed (albeit briefly in 2011) how to handle it.

"I will have to play my best to have any chance to beat this qualifier ranked 100 in the world, no?" (AO 2009 first round)

So is that :-
a) an actual quote
b) something resembling an actual quote
c) Not really anything like a quote

I was thinking of his age, pushing 27 this is where it started going wrong for Federer. McEnroe as well, so thats where my doubts lie