Rafael Nadal and the secrets behind the making of a champion

Last year, around this time, Rafael Nadal didn’t know whether he would ever be able to give his absolute best on the tennis court. He didn’t even know whether he would be ever able to play tennis again.

Earlier, he would play through pain. The niggles didn’t matter – he just wanted to be on the court competing. But then he broke down completely last year. He just couldn’t go on. His mind was clouded by doubts – but he worked hard at dispelling them.

And his 60-3 win-loss record since is comeback is testament to the manner in which he along with his team got things absolutely right. Right from picking the right tournament to make his comeback on the tour to his decision to play the hard court season – Team Nadal has not put a foot wrong.

But still you wonder… what really went into the making of Nadal? How does one mould a player like him – ever gracious off court yet merciless on it?

Who better to tell you that than Uncle Toni (he also goes by the name Antonio “Toni” Nadal Homar), Nadal’s only coach since childhood? He first took over as Nadal’s coach when he was four and since then he has been as relentless off court as the left-hander has been on it.

The little changes that we see in Nadal’s game are all part of the Uncle Toni influence. In his time away, Nadal decided he needed to shorten the points and he did that by moving closer to the baseline and going for the winners earlier in rallies.

After the US Open final, Nadal said: “The only change that I can tell you is true that I’m playing more inside and more aggressive and with the right determination.”

The rest of his game is all the same.

It sounds easy but it meant doing away with a habit that he had spent years developing and that’s never easy. But Toni taught Nadal to adapt early.

Toni actually chose to practice on poor, ill-prepared courts with bad balls, just to teach Rafael that winning or losing isn’t about good balls or courts or strings or a bad call. It’s about playing to your absolute limit no matter what the conditions; about fighting for every ball; about not letting the intensity drop; about keeping the concentration going for each point… for each ball. It also helped Nadal put things in perspective.

“From when he was little, I made it so that things didn’t always go smoothly. So, unlike other kids today, he has learned that things don’t always happen the easy way, not right away,” Toni told the Tennis magazine in an interview in 2010.

Of course, Nadal, in his autobiography, Rafa wrote that his uncle’s strictness “has its value, in that he pushes me always to improve and do better, it can also be bad because he creates insecurity.”

But mentally it meant Nadal figured out how to fight things (even his Uncle) on his own.

“All that tension in every single coaching session, right from the start, has allowed me today to face up to the difficult moments in a match with more self-control than might otherwise have been the case. Toni did a lot to build that fighting character people say they see in me on court,” Nadal wrote in his book.

And the early years weren’t easy on Nadal. He would often go back home crying. Toni had a habit of calling him ‘mummy’s boy’ and he would constantly taunt the young Rafa.

“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.”

Then, there’s responsibility. Toni isn’t one of the coaches who goes around restringing racquets for his player or ordering food for him. He reckons that the world number two has enough free time during tournaments to do all that and more.

In his autobiography, Nadal recounted another incident: “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.”

Either which way, Toni got it absolutely right. The Nadal we see today is a mirror image of what Toni had in mind. And now the final piece in the puzzle seems to be coming together too.

In the interview to the Tennis magazine in 2010, Toni had revealed exactly what he set out to achieve.

“Even as a kid, Rafa had to be the master of his own tennis decisions. After that, my philosophy as a coach is not to tell a player: “you have to hit that ball this or that way because that’s the way that shot is played.” That’s wrong and you can see how so many players have so many different techniques. I will rather tell a player: “It doesn’t matter how you take that ball, but you need to hit it there with this speed and that sort of effect.” What I mean is that you have to look beyond technique. First of all, you need to know and understand the game.”

If you ask Uncle Toni, he’ll probably say that’s it only when you rise above obstacles that your career seems worthwhile. And in beating Federer, Djokovic, injuries… that’s all Nadal has really done.