Claudio Pistolesi spoke to Fanpage.it about Rafa Nadal, who has now retired. Also an opportunity to tell a tasty anecdote and focus on the relationship with Federer and Djokovic.
Claudio Pistolesi knows well Rafa Nadal and the other iconic big three, Roger Federer and Novak Djokovic. The former tennis player, coach and member of the ATP Players Council, who now manages the Claudio Pistolesi Enterprise academy in the United States, has also dedicated a book to the three “monsters” of tennis.
Speaking to the fan page, Pistolesi retraced the stages of Rafa’s career fresh out of retirement, focusing on his greatness on clay and beyond, complete with an anecdote that says a lot about his extreme correctness and humility which made him a champion at all round.
Claudio, Nadal’s retirement was in the air, but were you surprised that it arrived at this particular moment?
“There were some signs, because the Davis Cup is played in Spain, and I always thought that he would play his last match there. If he did, it meant that he was prepared enough and could support the team to the maximum. However, it all makes a lot of sense and above all in the end he decides: in recent years there was the catchphrase ‘when do you retire’ and this bored him. It was a time when the attention of tennis was elsewhere and on him he entered with a straight leg, deciding to retire. In Rome, for example, they threw him a farewell party and he explained ‘I never said I was retiring’.
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At least now the controversies of those who thought he should no longer play because he wasn’t at the top are over.
“Let’s try to fly a little higher, come on. He’s 38 years old and has had three decades of career in which he was number one. This is the most impressive record: he was number one in three different decades. From 2000 to 2010 , from 2010 to 2020, from 2020 to 2030. It’s impressive, now let’s leave it alone. It’s a natural thing, as he said perfectly: everything has a beginning and an end.”
Rafa Nadal was immense and maybe one day we will understand what he really did, especially at Roland Garros, don’t you think?
“I just wrote a book about this and it’s called “Three Monsters”. He is one of the three, in a good sense, meaning strength. He won 14 Roland Garros, it’s something inhuman. A record in sport, not just in tennis , very difficult to beat, in fact practically impossible. Will it be possible for someone to win 15 Roland Garros? I can’t imagine it, many matches in the fifth but never in the final: there he won 7 finals in 3 sets and 7 in 4 sets. Another impressive thing, 14-0 in the final, without having ever lost.”
In your opinion, what is his main skill, the one he had in greater doses than Federer and Djokovic?
“He was superior in mentality. A demonstration of superiority never seen on earth. Surely the main quality was the mentality and the ability to focus on the solution and not on the problem. In any situation he looked for the solution and took responsibility. I told you about the episode with my uncle last time, as a kid I had the privilege of working and still working with Toni Nadal, with whom I just held a conference and he was talking about Rafael and Djokovic was stronger in this: the mentality of always looking within himself for the strength to solve problems.”
I was also struck by its growth on other surfaces such as grass where it initially wasn’t comfortable. An alien in this too?
“Rafa has won 4 US Opens. If you take away everything he has won on clay, he would still be an immortal player. He has won 2 Wimbledons. As he also said, he has gone far beyond even his initial expectations. It is also true that this snowball became an avalanche, with these three feeding each other for many years. First there were only Federer and Nadal, then Djokovic also arrived and continued this virtuous process of continuing to improve, because they were there. two more.”
In short, have they rewritten the history of tennis by feeding each other?
“All three benefited from the other two, this is the secret why they achieved these inhuman, science fiction numbers. Djokovic is still there, he is only a year younger than Nadal, while Federer is a little older. He has started winning first and some say he did it because the other two weren’t there, but that’s not true because there were Safin, Hewitt and other very strong players even before Nadal and Djokovic. Then Nadal arrived and he he pushed to roll up his sleeves and grow even more. Federer, for example, expected Nadal to beat him on grass in 2008.
You, who know him well, have a particular anecdote about Nadal, perhaps from behind the scenes?
“I’ll tell you this. We were at the Stuttgart tournament and we were watching the Wimbledon final on TV, which ended in darkness because it was a marathon. Nadal won against Roger and received the prize from the Duke of Kent. I was in Stuttgart with Bolelli (at that time Pistolesi was his coach, ed.) for the tournament on the Monday morning after the Wimbledon final I went to the locker room because the locker room was empty, and who came in? ) Because he had to attend the Stuttgart tournament, he had canceled and was therefore obliged by the ATP regulations to show up otherwise he would have been fined.
In short, he had wasted no time in getting around despite the 7-hour final, including bad weather.
“Obviously everyone was waiting for him on the pitch because then we were playing on clay. I had to laugh when I saw him and actually he did too, because he saw me amazed. Until a few hours before, I had seen him in television and was on Wimbledon center and then I went there and found him there in the locker room. I said to him: ‘What are you doing here? Damn, you’re really good.” And he replied: ‘I know, but you have to do what needs to be done’. He would have paid a fine of 5 thousand dollars (a negligible amount for him, ed.) by not showing up, but out of respect for the tournament he went there in person to cancel because he felt sorry for the organizers and fans, massacred by his absence. He was clearly upset because that Wimbledon match lasted so many hours and he wasn’t able to play a tournament.”
Did Nadal also give you the impression of almost changing his physiognomy between when he played and when he was out?
“He played on the Playstation with Moya, so to speak. He was a boy and now he is a man, a family man, always extremely simple, easy-going, nice, polite. Then on the pitch he changed. In the book we say that he took freezing showers , it didn’t matter where or when, 45′ before the match, he used it to almost enter a state of competitive trance and he had these rituals, like the one of the kangaroo jumps in front of the opponent. He also used body language to gain an advantage mental on the other, he did slaloms to catch the balls. In short, he was like the roar of the tiger. Then he managed himself well in his private life, he always had the same girlfriend, he never responded to provocations, always being linear off the pitch.” .
He comes from a family of professional sportsmen, how much did this influence his education and explosion?
“I have the privilege of being close to Toni Nadal who explained to me that he took a lot from Muster. When Rafa was little, Toni didn’t know what he had in his hands and followed these players who exaggerated training as an extra weapon and advantage compared to the others. He also liked Connors, as a fighting spirit. A cross between Muster and Connors, both left-handed, and he had some injuries, and in fact he would have liked to play many more doubles but he couldn’t there was time and he had to go to the physiotherapist and recover.
In closing we return to the big three, what can we say to differentiate them?
“I edited the Italian part of a French book by Bernelle and completed it by adding that of Sinner to the analysis of these three monsters, with a tribute to Berrettini. In my opinion the three cannot be separated and are one The ifs and buts are not there: you have to take the whole package, and the three monsters have fed themselves and represented a perfect storm in sport, not only in tennis. They have reached peaks that I believe are very difficult to achieve I think Nadal is the most difficult on clay and in this respect he is number one. Not even Federer and Djokovic have managed to win the same Slam 14 times, not even as human beings.”
Source: www.fanpage.it
