Roger Federer says Rafael Nadal made him “enjoy the game even more” as the Spaniard retires from tennis at the Davis Cup in Malaga, Spain, this week.
Federer, who retired alongside Nadal at the 2022 Laver Cup, opened a letter in tribute to his great rival with the salient fact of their rivalry: “You beat me — a lot. More than I managed to beat you.”
“You challenged me in ways no one else could,” Federer added.
Nadal beat him in their first meeting in 2004 before he arrived as a force in tennis by winning the 2005 French Open. Federer had won four Grand Slam titles by then; he would win Wimbledon and the US Open in 2005 as well, moving 6-1 ahead in a title count that would finish 22-20 in Nadal’s favour.
“I thought I was on top of the world, and I was, until two months later, when you walked on the court in Miami in your red sleeveless shirt, showing off those biceps, and you beat me convincingly,” Federer recalled from that first encounter in Miami. They played each other 40 times, Nadal winning 24-16, including the 2008 Wimbledon final that ended Federer’s five-title streak and fully signalled how the Spaniard could do damage to the Swiss.
“You made me reimagine my game,” Federer said.
The now-43-year-old remodelled his backhand to deal with the high topspin forehands that Nadal would relentlessly kick into it and, as he noted in the letter, even changed his racket in search of an edge. He added that playing Nadal on clay, especially at Roland Garros in Paris where he won 14 French Open titles and holds a match record of 112-4, was “stepping into your backyard”.
Federer has previously said that any quarrel he had with clay-court tennis was not the surface, but the fact that Nadal was on it.
Federer called his retirement alongside Nadal at the Laver Cup, in which they played doubles together, “one of the most special moments of my career”.
He also credited Nadal’s idiosyncrasies, “assembling your water bottles like toy soldiers in formation”, and the hair-adjusting, ball-bouncing service routine that became so familiar to tennis fans around the world.
Nadal, 38, confirmed his retirement from tennis in October after two years in which a litany of injuries felled his ability to play as he wished. “I don’t have the chance to be competitive the way I like to be competitive. My body is not able to give me the possibility,” he said in a news conference before his final bow.
New York Times News Service
