“I’m tired of so much tribute” | Relief

Malaga.- Rafael Nadal He woke up this Wednesday at the Higuerón Hotel in Fuengirola. with a hangover. It’s not that he drank a little last night, no, he didn’t have the body to party, It was an emotional hangover. He got out of bed for the first time with a completely new and alien sensation, a feeling Yesuh, officially a professional tennis player.

He left his room, went downstairs for breakfast and signed a few autographs and posed for photos in front of a mural that street artist Jose Rulos had painted in the hotel lobby before heading to the airport to fly home. Then he got into the van and He disappeared from the spotlights and cameras. He disappeared. Typically, when Nadal leaves a tournament, people, journalists and the public almost always know what his next stop, his next event on the calendar, will be. Not now: After 20 years of professional career The Balearic Islands begin a new phase.

“There are a lot of emotions, and this is such a drastic change that they are not absorbed from day to day. It’s not, “Today I retire and my life begins tomorrow.” I think your mind has to prepare for it in advance,” Feliciano Lopez, who experienced the process first-hand a year and a half ago when he hung up his racket in Mallorca at the age of 41, told Relevo.

Nadal makes it three balls short and makes it clear that this is solely because his body is not reacting. “The reality is that you never want to reach this point, I’m not tired of playing tennis, my body doesn’t want to play anymore.“We have to accept the situation,” were some of Nadal’s words early Wednesday at the Martin Carpena Stadium as the organization paid tribute to him.

Seeing himself suffer one injury after another, Nadal had been flirting with retirement for a couple of years. Final decision This happened shortly after losing to Novak Djokovic in the second round of the Paris Olympics. That was almost four months ago, enough time for Feliciano to say that he had fully internalized all the emotions that changing those characteristics entailed.

“Rafa, David Ferrer or I, for example, planned to retire early. So when the time comes, you’ll be much more prepared.. And then the moment at which you arrive also has a great influence. I really enjoyed my retirement because I felt good and had no problems physically. Obviously I couldn’t play the same way I did when I was 20, but I was still at a competitive level and I finished my career beating players in the top 50 in the world. At that time, this was an achievement for me.” says Feely, the current director of the Davis Cup and Mutua Madrid Open finals.

David Ferrer’s Experience

dDavid Ferrer current Davis Cup captainretired in 2019 at the age of 37.. He ended his career at the Mutua Madrid Open, where a final tribute was paid to him. The man from Alicante announced his retirement almost a year earlier and took advantage of the first months of 2019 to say goodbye to some of the most special tournaments of his career.

“I lived it well, I’m already tired of myself, of such respect“Says the man from Javea about the situation that Nadal has experienced first-hand this year and he is respected wherever he is, in case this was the last time they saw him in competition.

“In Rafa’s case, it will be someone who handles it very well and is happy because he has worries in life, he is curious and he has something to do.“Continues Ferrer. “He is a different athlete because he is also an ambassador for tennis. He’s not going to travel that much because he’s very familiar, but he’ll be closely involved with tennis. This is not like someone who is retiring and doesn’t know what to do with so many free hours. He will have a full schedule, almost like a professional tennis player. but on the other hand.”

So what is Nadal going to do now?

Once you hang up your racket, Nadal is going to devote himself, first of all, to rest. But this break won’t involve lying on a lounger. No, Nadal can’t sit still.: he will be with his family, he will fish and sail in the Mediterranean, he will play golf, he will devote himself to expanding his business, and the Academy will become the flagship of the empire, and surely he will return to the forefront of tennis in the not too distant future. Davis Cup and Laver Cup captains.

These are the two places he will strive for sooner or later. One thing is clear: he no longer has to get up early to go train at the academy, and that the routine he has followed for the past three decades, in which his life was tennis, is over.

“Leaving at the end is still hard because you’ve dedicated your whole life to one thing and suddenly it’s no longer there.“- says Feliciano in this sense. – “You have to admit that the emotions that tennis gave you will not give you anything else in life. You have other very important things to do, or even more important than tennis, but the emotions that going out onto a playground full of people, the adrenaline from games, caused you, all this will no longer be in your life.. So that emotional part has to be filled with other things as well.”