RAFA I / INTRO - BEGINNINGS - ENTERS ROGER FEDERER - THE FAMED 2004 DAVIS CUP FINAL

One entry about RAFA NADAL (Manacor, Mallorca, third of June, 1986) was definitely on the cards, given that he is my ultimate hero. But I prefer to call him just Rafa, as if he was a friend. After so many years of such a wonderful impact on the existence of relatives, friends and my own, and after making us so happy and proud, it just feels natural to consider one of our own, even if we do not know him in person. The great moments enjoyed because of him are so many that I think it is well deserved, and I do not care about how trivial the career of an elite athlete may seem.


I've written lots of pieces so far, some of them extremely long, but I don't think any of them will demand from me as much as this one will. This is what I've mentioned a few times before, but big time: there is stuff I know I will end up talking about, but I don't even know how to begin. In fact, this one is, by far, the draft that has remained on the back burner for the longest time since I began writing this blog (as proof of what I'm saying, I can say I have noticed, when resuming this task, that the last time I added something to it was in 2022), to the point that its own title has changed a few times now. At first it was all about discussing him and some of his latest feats, but in no time I had to change the title of this piece because another one of his famous tennis exploits had taken place again. When I proceeded to resume the writing, he had already retired from tennis, so I chose to go beyond my first idea and try to cover his entire pro career. That's why I prefer to name this piece after him. Just like that.

After finishing some other entries that had also been waiting for long, and given that Rafa's career as a tennis player belongs now, unfortunately, to the past, I will take advantage of the fact that this year he will turn forty, to write about him (although there is no way I can finish this in time for his birthday, as it was first planned). I wanted him to never retire from this beautiful sport, but it's a good thing, anyway, the perspective that his retirement (which took place in November 2024, one month after it was announced) can provide me with, because I don't have to worry about future hyphotesis; only about what has already happened. Which is a lot, by the way.

This piece's intention is to traverse Rafa's career through the memories I keep of it, while making significant stops at Rafa's most important moments or matches.


Let's go.







Rafa Nadal became a pro a long time ago. So much that he began his pro career in 2001, when he turned fifteen (that precociousness is one of the reasons he did not excel at the Grand Slams as a junior, having reached just one semifinal: Wimbledon, in 2002, if I'm not mistaken, when he was defeated by Morocco's LAMINE OUAHAB). That huge step is taken by tennis players when them and their entourage consider the time is right, and that's something which is not to be taken slightly. If a tennis player takes that step it is because they can, because they have achieved some sporting goals and there is some economic and logistic support behind them. It is not that you want it just for the sake of it. If Rafa and his people deemed that moment as the right one, they knew what they were doing.



Rafa, as a kid, showing his passion
 for evertything sea-related




His first baby steps as a pro were low profiled ones, but with remarkable things to be told and always on the rise. In fact, that year (fourteen of May), and still fourteen, he defeated no other than Australia's PAT CASH, Wimbledon champ in 1987 (Cash had retired only four years prior, and much younger than Rafa himself when he called tennis quits), in an exhibition match (BORIS BECKER was the one who had to play Cash, but he got injured) on clay. Also in 2001, and more specifically on the fateful eleven of September, he was defeated in a first round match, in Madrid's Brezo De Osuna's tennis club, against Valladolid's GUILLERMO PLATEL. It was a tournament within the category known as Future. Why do I mention this, if that wasn't even a final? Three reasons why: the first one, the day it took place on, one whose images and memories I, for one, can't erase from my mind (although, obviously, there's no relation with the protagonist here; the second one is because Rafa squandered no less than thirteen match points, to end up defeated and without what would have become his first points as a tennis pro; and last, but not least, because I am related, somehow, to Platel, Rafa's rival on that fateful day. The rest of this story will be told later on.



Guillermo Platel, in much more recent
 times, surrounded by pupils









Those first points as a professional would be reached in Seville, litlle after, during a Challenger tournament in which he was given a wild card and beat in the first round the also spaniard ISRAEL MATOS GIL.



On the 29th of April, on Mallorca's home soil, and after receiving another wild card, he won his first ATP match when he beat RAMÓN DELGADO (only the ninth most precocious tennis player in the Open era to do so; the first ten achieved the feat before turning sixteen). Delgado was already twenty five and ranked eighty one in the world. Rafa finished that year among the first two hundred racquets in the world.



Paraguay's Ramón Delgado, 
first victim of many






He finished the year with one victory and one loss.



Already in 2003, during his second ATP event of his career, in Montecarlo (16th of April), he defeated ALBERT COSTA, then seventh player in the world and Roland Garros' defending champion, of all people (his first win against a top 10), which cracked open the gates of the world's top 100 for him (the second youngest player to do it, only behind MICHAEL CHANG). Also remarkable is how he had crushed Slovakia's KAROL KUCERA (twenty second in the world) in the previous round. Another astonishing win, this time agains CARLOS MOYÁ in Hamburg, preceded his debut in a Grand Slam main draw, at Wimbledon (he missed Paris because of his elbow). He reached the third round there (beating MARIO ANCIC in the first one), becoming the youngest man to do it since the already mentioned Boris Becker (1984), where he lost against Thailand's PARADORN SRICHAPHAN. In Umag (Croatia) he lost in the semis against Moya himself. He would never lose in the semifinals of a clay tournament again for the next twelve years, amassing a grand total of fifty two victories in a row in said round, before losing again, already in 2015, in Río De Janeiro. He won his first ATP title, although playing doubles, in that same croatian event, together with Spain's ÁLEX LÓPEZ MORÓN. He only won one match at the US Open and, also in that same September, he took part in the last Challenger tourney of his career, in San Juan De Luz, where he had to withdraw against RICHARD GASQUET due to an injury. The anecdote serves its own purpose, for good old Ricardito would never beat Rafa ever after. Never in an ATP tournament. Two good friends the two of them though.




Albert Costa, after winning Roland
Garros (2002)




The great Carlos Moyá, first of the
 four Spanish world number one,
 during his pro years 




Rafa and Gasquet, a long time ago




Richard Gasquet, one of the best
 proponents of the one handed
 backhand after the turn
 of the century








Rafa wrapped his 2003 season with a 14-11 (victories and defeats) record, and among the top 50.





I have to take a break here. I do not mean to be perceived as a scholar in all things Rafa. I knew some of the things that have already been told, but most of them have been revealed to me later. Not even that anecdote related to Guillermo Platel, which I hold dear for being realted to me too, was familiar to me back in the day. And it wasn't until several years later. I do not want to fool anybody, let alone myself: that Rafa Nadal kid was starting to make waves as a promising young tennis player and, even if no one was expecting what came next, he was already making a lot of heads turn; and yet, I wasn't a fan since those early days. It did not take me long to jump, in a completely unconscious manner (all credit goes to Rafa himself) on a bandwagon which has provided me with some of the wildest and best remembered sporting joys. The best of them all, together with some others which bear no relation to Rafa's, but that he has surely enjoyed too.

Rafa means a turning point, at least as far as I am concerned. I have always liked tennis, thanks to my dad, and it's been a huge part of my life for longer than forty years now, but it's fair to admit there were times when I did not pay so much attention to it, as a tennis player and, above all, as a viewer. It all changed when Rafa made his big entrance, by the end of 2004. I have never enjoyed tennis as much as I did when he was active; not as part of the overall tennis audience and not to mention as a tennis player. All because of him.

There are many reasons why, but I'd like to focus on one in particular. I do believe tennis is the best sport of them all. On par with football (soccer), of course, and I must admit there are many times in which I am more willing to watch the latter. Perhaps the most of them. But leaving aside that sportmanship which usually goes hand in hand with tennis, and that is often so much missed in football, I think I like tennis better for being a more comprehensive affair. I'll elaborate. Both the physical and technical factors are taken for granted, and in tennis' case they are paramount because, come a certain point, this is about much more than just hitting balls over a net. Those factors mean a lot in football as well, but here is when the mental thing enters, which is that little something that I think makes the difference.



A young Rafa with Carlos, role model
and fellow countryman




All of us, football fans, are aware of the fact that there are many players who are, let's say, average (no disrespect at all, this is for lack of a better word), and what they usually do is contributing their individual, less remarkable efforts, to the team one. And there are others who bring sheer talent (and may times even more than that) to the table. Not that both versions do not fit together, but in any case, the latter uses to be more crucial, because of the technical skills and/or analytical ones, game insight, off-the-ball game and so on. But tennis is an individual sport. A tennis player has to be those both versions, the grinder and the thinker, at the same time. No one gets to win a football game by themselves, and one's own talent gets strenghtened by everyone else's, same as your mistakes, which tend to be disguised by the overall success. Everyone wins, everyone loses. Not in tennis. You are down there on your own and nothing else matters. You have to find the solutions and execute them (that's why I'm against what it is known as Coaching). And no one gets to win only on sheer talent, without physical effort and dedication. Neither the other way around.

And this is when I have to go back to the upmost importance of the mental side of tennis. Let's think, for instance, about the best one hundred tennis players in the world: why are number three and ninety eight so much apart between each other, leaving the ranking aside, if it is taken for granted that all those players are both physical and technical prodigies (otherwise they would not be there)? Because of the mind management. A tennis player ranked between the one and two hundred in the world will hardly ever beat a top 10 one. It could happen, of course, and it does happen sometimes. And even worse, for everyone is entitled to a bad day at the office and, on the contrary, to a very inspired one, together with the certainty that there is nothing to lose. The strokes are there, and I don't think there is so much difference among tennis pros in that regard. But there is a difference when it comes to that mental aspect, and that one is huge.



Rafaelo, learning to coexist with a
 tough and sometimes cruel sport




Tennis is a weird thing. It's unfair and even cruel more often than not. The best point of your entire life could amount to just dust if you hit the last ball long or wide for just the tiniest of margins; but if you don't, it will worth as much as your opponent's next double fault. Both hits and misses matter (to the point that, in principle, tennis is played under a relative silence in order to favor the players' focus), and exactly the same, no matter how big or small. Adjusting to new and unexpected scenarios is a must and the shortest lost of focus could be fatal. There is no truce. It's not the same playing someone you usually beat, as trying to find solutions to defeat someone you usually lose to. And it's not only about what you want or can do, for it all depends on the guy on the other end of the net too. In my case, after so many years of playing, there are times in which I just despise tennis. Or better put, I despise myself when playing it. How on earth, after almost an entire lifetime of yielding a racquet, can I be this bad? And, as far as I am concerned, it's not about winning or losing anymore, but about being capable to perform on court as well I know I can, and not as poorly as I could be able to. The thing is that I'm perfectly aware of the fact that four or five days of shameful tennis playing could go by, together with my promising myself that this is over. Never again. And still I go back to it. And soon after, on any given day, it all clicks and I have my reward. And that's just enough to come back and try to achieve those kinds of moments again. Tennis can let you down in the most miserable of ways, but when the performance is good, you don't need anything else to come back to it. If this sport was a drug, it would be a hard one.

Well, when it comes to handling everything that's been mentioned, together with all the outside factors that could affect the player at a specific moment, there hasn't been anyone better than Rafa Nadal. And, most likely, there will never be. I think that, out of all his virtues, that's the one I admire the most. We all have had a certain moment in the past, in which we have finally realized that nothing can be taken for granted when it comes to him. He could never be written off a match either. And all this, without throwing or smashing a single racquet in more than two decades of professional tennis. Not even once. In a sport like this one, in which very often you would wish to destry everything around you, beginning with your own head, such self-control and such good-natured spirits and good manners are just amazing. And given his usual environment and how Rafa has been influenced by it, I'd be surprised to learn that he ever did something like that as a kid.



Making his debut in a Grand Slam
 main draw. Wimbledon (2003)





2004



On with the action. The good stuff was going to begin, as mentioned, in 2004 (despite one injury that prevented him from playing during almost the entire clay season). Rafa still remains a stranger to me almost the entire year. We all know who he is, of course, and he seems to be on the rise, but I don't pay further attention. Back in those days, tennis was still some kind of old buddy I had spent good moments withs and a fair share of disappointments because of (due to my behaviour, most of the times, and my own way to deal with it, as I said), and with whom I did not have, neither the best, nor the most habitual of relationships. It would not take long before it achieved best friend status. It would all begin to change by early December. Before that, I do not even remember being aware of any of all the important things that happened to Rafa in 2004.

Let's take a closer look.


By the beginning of 2004 (if we count some results from back in 2003), Rafa lost, for the fifth time in a row, in a first round match (Chennai). That was his worst losing streak as a pro. Never ever would that happen again, and he hasn't even come of age yet. In Auckland he played and lost his first ATP final (against Slovakia's DOMINIK HRBATY), and fresh off that achievement, he won two matches in the Australian Open main draw (his first appearance), before losing to local hereo and former world number one, LLEYTON HEWITT.



Lleyton Hewitt, the most precocious
 world number one ever,
 until Alcaraz's arrival







2004 was the season in which Rafa won his first title, but it could be that said year was mostly remembered, other than said title and what took place in December, for being the one that saw his rivalry with some Swiss guy called ROGER FEDERER take off. Federer was the world number one (Rafa was thirty four), and they both clashed in Miami (third round, on the 28th of March), with Rafa shocking the tennis world by not only winning (double 6-3), but also doing so without facing a single break point. I have seen footage from that day, of course, but I guess no one will be surprised if I say I did not watch the match at that very moment. I wish I had.




Roger Federer during the first
 years of this century




That very first day between Rafa and Roger







In Estoril (April), while facing Ricardito again, he suffered a fracture in the left ankle which made him lose three months of tennis, and who knows if also his first major at a French Open he could not compete at (neither did he at Wimbledon, although his chances there were much more remote by that time when compared with those he could have had in Paris). When he was back, already in Augusts (on the 15th, I think), he won his first ATP singles title (Sopot, Poland), after beating Argentina's JOSÉ ACASUSO. The remainder of the season wasn't really anything to write home about, and what stood out was the only match he won at the US Open, before getting massacred by then defending champion ANDY RODDICK. The funny thing was that, at that very same tournament, he achieved what so far was his biggest result at this Gand Slam level, reaching the semis with TOMMY ROBREDO. I'd dare say that one is his best result as a doubles player in a GS, for I guess he has hardly played doubles at the majors, given his enormous expectations as a singles player.



Andy Roddick after winning the
2003 US Open, at Ferrero's expense







And also, Rafaelo took part in his first Olympic Games in 2004 (Athens), although playing only doubles, together with Moyá. They were defeated by the Brazilians in the first round.



The Davis Cup is what there was left. That famed edition from 2004. If his win against Federer had had all heads in the tennis world turning his way, his performance in the final of the then still prestigious team competition, brought him worldwide recognition and an exponential increase of his popularity. But that famous December weekend has some history behind which deserves to be told.

Rafa was summoned in February to play the last sixteen round, against the Czechs, given the very noticeable absences of Moyá and JUAN CARLOS FERRERO (out of all the four world number one players hailing from Spain in all history, they were the first two, the ones who came before Rafa), no less. Rafa, in his debut, being Spain the away team, and after the hosts had chosen an indoor fast surface to play on, had to play three matches, losing the doubles and his first singles one. The unbelievable thing about that loss in singles, against JIRI NOVÁK, is that it remained his only one in said discipline in this competition in more than two decades, until he lost to BOTIC VAN DE ZANDSCHULP (The Netherlands) for the second and last time in which, funnily enough, was his last official match ever, played in November, 2024, in Málaga. Rafa lost his first singles match, and also the last one, and, in the meantime, he remained unbeaten since he was only seventeen until he was thirty eight. A 29-2 stat which means a 93.55% winning percentage, the best ever among tennis legends with a significant amount of Davis Cup matches under their belts (I'm not counting even better figures which were the result of far fewer matches played than Rafa's); even better than Boris Becker's 92.68% (38-3), BJORN BORG's 92.5% (37-3) and ANDY MURRAY's 91.67% (33-3).



Juan Carlos Ferrero, Spain's second
 world number one, after winning
 Roland Garros in 2003




But Rafa managed to win the remaining singles match, beating RADEK STEPÁNEK, and Spain went through. In the last eight (April), in Mallorca, Rafa and Robredo lost at doubles the only point Spain did not win against The Netherlands, and in the September semifinals held in Alicante, both men won the doubles match in another 4-1 win.

The big final against USA took place in Seville, in December, in front of a crowd of 27000 spectators. That figure became a record one which nowadays has been broken twice, and yet is not far away from the 27500 souls that witnessed the 2017 final between France and Belgium. I mention this to remark how big the situation was, compared to the relative lack of experience of the young kid.

The first two matches happened on the 3rd of December, with a more or less expected win by Spain's number one, Moyá, against USA's two, a guy called MARDY FISH who went on to become a much more relevant player in the next ten years, to the point he was ranked as high as number seven in the world during this sport's most demanding era; he also turned into a fast court menace and amassed victories against the best tennis players of those years (including one over Rafa), barring NOVAK DJOKOVIC. In 2004 he won a singles silver medal at the Athens Olympic Games.



Mardy Fish




Later on that day, it was Rafaelo's turn, after a controversial decision made by the team's three captains (JORDI ARRESE, JUAN BAUTISTA AVENDAÑO and JOSEP PERLAS), who chose the boy, despite his little experience and the injury he had gone through that year, before someone like Ferrero, who was the obvious choice but did not seem to be at his best. There was some tension, for he did claim to be ready and, besides being who he then was, he had also been the hero of Spain's first triumph in this competition, four years prior. Rafa's overall conditions convinced the captains, and there was an element of surprise as well, and an annoyed Ferrero had to swallow that bitter pill like a pro, despite not being happy with the decision and the sensation that the Mallorcan's rise could be a changing of the guard.



A beast is on the loose




Truth is, I thought that, regardless of the reasons behind that choice, Rafaelo's options were minimal. It did not matter the match was going to be held at home or on clay, for it was Andy Roddick who would be on the other side of the net. He was a much more experienced former number one in the world, and a twenty two year old GS champ against whom Rafa had been capable of winning just seven games, in three sets, that previous September. Undoubtedly, the whole country was rooting for him, but we are talking about an eighteen year old kid who had to play in front of almost thirty thousand people, with a Davis Cup final at stake. It did not matter to Rafa. Not that Roddick played one of those lousy matches he sometimes played on a surface which was far from being his favourite one, for that was a Davis Cup final and this competition has always been held dear by the americans. No way. In fact, he claimed a very tough opening set. But he ended up losing in four, having to suffer a couple of 6-2 en route to his loss, courtesy of a Rafa Nadal who was just flying. Rafaelo made clear that stages like that one were not going to frighten him and, if you add the partisan crowd, the surface and his youth, there's little else to be said. According to him, one of the best moments in his entire career. And he also became the youngest tennis player to ever win this competition, and the youngest ever to win a singles point for the winning side in the final round as well (overcoming, once again, Pat Cash, who had achieved that honour before Rafaelo, being just thirty days older than him). There have been younger players than Rafa was on that very day who have played a Davis Cup final (Becker), but, they either lost the tie without playing a singles match, or they won that match without it being enough for their countries to become the champion.



An on fire Rafa and a resigned Andy Roddick




That was his entire contribution to that final. On the fourth of December, the americans won, as expected, the doubles match (the famed BRYAN brothers were too high a mountain to be climbed by Ferrero and Robredo); But on Sunday the fifth, Moyá sealed Spain's second victory in the Davis Cup with another win over Roddick. Robredo beat Fish in the last match, although it was just a mere formality.



Roddick and Rafa shake hands after the match








In spite of all the year's achievements, Rafa finsihed the season ranked outside the top 50, as number fifty one, although that was mostly due to his long absence from the courts, which took place during most of the clay season.


His overall figures in 2004 were 30-17.





End of the first chapter





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