By James Hansen and Charlie Eccleshare / The Athletic
Rafael Nadal has confirmed that he will retire from professional tennis after the Davis Cup Finals in Malaga, Spain, in November.
“The reality is that it has been some difficult years, these last two especially. I don’t think I have been able to play without limitations,” Nadal, 38, said in a video released late last week. “It is obviously a difficult decision and one that has taken me some time to make. But in this life, everything has a beginning and an end.”
Nadal won his first professional match at age 15 at a Challenger Tournament in Seville, Spain, and won 22 Grand Slam titles, including 14 French Opens. He will finish his career with a 112-4 record at Roland Garros, where he lost his final Grand Slam match against Alexander Zverev this year.
In 2008, he broke Roger Federer’s streak of five Wimbledon titles in a final that lasted 4 hours, 48 minutes, in the first shift in a 15-year rivalry between the two players at the top of the men’s game. Alongside Novak Djokovic, Nadal and Federer formed the “Big Three,” winning 66 Grand Slam titles among them. Federer retired at age 41 in 2022, but Djokovic is still an active player.
While that 2008 Wimbledon final is regularly held up as one of the best matches of all time, Nadal and Djokovic’s 5-hour, 53-minute Australian Open final in 2012, which Djokovic won in five sets, and their 2009 semifinal meeting in Madrid, which Nadal won in three, stand at least alongside it.
Together with those two, Nadal will bow out of tennis as one of the greatest male players of all time.
“I feel super, super lucky for all the things I have experienced. I want to thank the tennis industry and everyone in the sport: my long-term colleagues, especially my great rivals,” he said in Thursday’s video. “I think it is the appropriate time to put an end to a career that has been long and much more successful than I could ever have imagined.”
Nadal won his last Grand Slam title at the 2022 French Open, essentially playing on one foot after numbing his left with injections in order to compete. He then suffered an abdominal tear at Wimbledon 2022 and another injury at the 2023 Australian Open. His last singles appearance was at the 2024 Paris Olympics, where he lost in a lopsided straight-sets defeat to Djokovic, who would win Olympic gold. Nadal won a singles gold medal of his own at the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
He is expected to play with compatriot Carlos Alcaraz, who is already a four-time Grand Slam champion at 21, at the Davis Cup.
‘An outpouring of emotion from figures way beyond tennis’
(Analysis from Charlie Eccleshare)
Nadal’s retirement announcement isn’t a big surprise, but it still feels seismic.
Men’s tennis without Nadal just doesn’t seem right. For almost 20 years, he has been such a dominant, unique figure within the sport — a genuine one-of-a-kind whose reputation and adoration goes way beyond tennis. You only have to look at the outpouring of emotion from figures across sport, particularly in football and particularly in Spain, to see his global impact.
It wasn’t just what he achieved on the court, but the way that he achieved it. Somehow part raging bull, part impeccably well-mannered athlete, he first transformed perceptions of clay-court players and then obliterated them.
Nadal was initially viewed as that when he won the French Open in 2005 but developed one of the best all-court games in the history of the sport to win 22 Grand Slam titles, emerging as one of the best volleyers in the men’s game toward the end of his career. As well as those 14 French Open titles, he won two Wimbledon titles, two Australian Open titles and four U.S. Open titles.
His rivalry with Federer defined tennis in the 2000s and brought the sport to a bigger audience than ever before. The Wimbledon final of 2008, won by Nadal, is considered by many to be the greatest match ever played, but his 2012 Australian Open final against Djokovic and their three ATP clay-court meetings in 2009 (in Monte Carlo, Madrid, and Rome) stand up too among many more.
For many, Nadal is the greatest player and competitor to have ever played the men’s game, with surely the most ferocious and effective forehand the sport has ever seen.
The nature of sport is that stars move on all the time, and of course, rationally, we knew this day would always have to come. And yet somehow, Nadal felt immortal, able to withstand constant serious injury to reemerge at the top of the sport, winning one of its biggest prizes, the 2022 French Open, with one functional foot.
At 38, he has battled one injury too many, and it’s time to say goodbye. But the legacy he leaves will never be forgotten.
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