Rafael Nadal’s Retirement: The End of Tennis As We Know?

The end of tennis. 

Of course, it hasn’t happened and will never happen, but if this ancient and beautiful game ever came closest to complete collapse, it is now in the present day.

If the people in tennis organizations were already worried about its future; wondering how to attract new generations of tennis fans, and how to capture the attention of younger generations who find it boring to watch a three-hour-long exchange of balls over the net; how will they react now when all the heroes, because of whom we fell in love with tennis, retire from the court forever?

Federer, Rafa…

Two-thirds of the sacred tennis trinity is now in the past. After Roger Federer two years ago, Rafael Nadal today told us what we all knew but pretended not to know in hopes that it would never happen. The end is now official. Rafael Nadal will retire after the Davis Cup Finals in Malaga in November.

Nadal made the announcement on his X account earlier today:

We will say 22 years of a career, brilliant tennis, epic rivalries, and matches that brought this game to its peak. The career officially lasted 23 years, but Nadal effectively ended it with that performance at the Australian Open last year.

Everything after that was painful to watch, let alone to experience from the perspective of a man who missed 18 Grand Slam tournaments due to various injuries and had to withdraw from five more after starting them.

Problems with the ankle, knee, elbow, and wrist along with radical medical treatments like nerve burning to eradicate the pain in his foot, all for the love of playing his sport, have made the number of 22 Grand Slam titles his final tally. His last major performance was the 2022 Roland Garros final, where he defeated Casper Ruud to claim his 14th title on the Paris clay, setting a record that will forever remain out of reach.

That Australian Open in 2023, and something entirely new – a hip injury that caused his wife, Maria Francisca, to leave the Rod Laver Arena in tears – was the official beginning of the end for the great Rafa. He missed the entire 2023 season and then tried to make a comeback, playing one Grand Slam match, only to lose in the first round of this year’s Roland Garros. Judging by the result, one could say it would have been better if he hadn’t returned, but once more, he tried to show what he did best throughout his career – he fought until his last ounce of strength.

“Everything must end”

“This is a very difficult decision, and I needed a little more time to come to it. But that’s life. Everything must end, everything has its beginning and its end. I think it’s the right time to end a career that was much longer and far more successful than I ever could have imagined,” said a visibly devastated Nadal, aware that his career was truly a tennis fairy tale, where the hero overcame all obstacles and raised the bar so high that his very good successors seem to be playing an entirely different sport.

The highlight of his career, besides being second in the number of Grand Slam titles in the history of men’s tennis and his record 14 titles at Roland Garros, was the epic 2008 Wimbledon final against Roger Federer.

The 2008 Wimbledon final is rightly regarded as the greatest tennis match of all time. Besides the five-set drama, Nadal used that London evening to show he wasn’t just the “king of clay”, but after two lost finals against Federer, he finally proved that Wimbledon was his home too.

After Nadal took a 2-0 lead in sets, it seemed that everything was going smoothly and that Federer’s five-year dominance at the All-England Club was over. However, the Swiss came back to 2-2, and the fifth and deciding set brought unprecedented drama, with Nadal winning 9-7, after which he fell to the grass as the new Wimbledon champion. This moment marked his career on the path to the greatest successes in the world.

A unique forehand

What tennis will miss most is his unique forehand, which, even after 23 years, remains unexplained both in the tennis world and by scientific experts. To hit a forehand with full power, then add spin to deceive every opponent, is something no one has ever been able to replicate. Nadal didn’t just come and adapt to the game of tennis; he decided to leave a mark and change it like no one had before.

After his rivalry with Federer, his battles with Novak Djokovic were no less thrilling, and although he often entered matches against the Serbian great already burdened by injuries, some of those encounters became legendary.

Undoubtedly, the greatest match Djokovic and Nadal played in their careers was the 2012 Australian Open final. Unlike his best duel with Federer, Nadal didn’t manage to secure a win in this one, but he contributed to making the match go down in history.

It was, up until then, the longest Grand Slam final in the Open Era. Djokovic triumphed after five hours and 53 minutes of play, and experts’ calculations show that it was the most physically demanding match in tennis history. It also became the symbol of Nadal and Djokovic’s rivalry.

Although he battled with Federer as well, Djokovic described Nadal as his greatest rival in his career, and the media believe that it was thanks to Nadal that the Serbian tennis player became what he is today, and that in him, he ‘birthed’ the most decorated tennis player in history.

92 ATP Titles, 22 Slams

Nadal retires from tennis with 92 ATP singles titles, 11 doubles titles, as a double Olympic champion, winner of 22 Grand Slam titles (14 Roland Garros, 4 US Open, 2 Wimbledon, and 2 Australian Open), 209 weeks as the world No.1, and four Davis Cups for the Spanish national team.

That number could grow, as Nadal will compete one last time at the upcoming Davis Cup final in Malaga at the end of November, and it will be the final time he removes the headband and hangs it over the net in the middle of the court.

What kind of tennis remains after Nadal, Federer, and Djokovic? Gloomy, empty, and nowhere near as captivating as it was over the past two decades?

If that’s the case, then there are many to blame for this. The culprits are precisely the members of the ‘Big Three’ who spoiled us and elevated the game to unrepeatable heights, as well as the generations that followed.

With all due respect to Kyrgios, Zverev, Tsitsipas, Dimitrov, Medvedev, Thiem and a few other players, an entire generation, which should have been somewhat comparable to the Big Three, slept through the years, and now it is coming back to haunt them, as tennis is not as popular as it once was.

The eternal enigma will remain how much Nadal could have achieved had he not spent such a large part of his career bound to a hospital bed. Not only did injuries keep him away from tournaments, but they also affected his performances when he did play, preventing him from reaching his physical peak, leaving us with a question that will never be answered.

In the end, that doesn’t really matter. Despite injuries permeating his career like no other before him, what everyone will remember most is his reputation as the greatest fighter tennis has ever seen and a born champion for whom every obstacle was just further motivation for extraordinary success.

What is your greatest memory from Nadal’s long career? Share with us in the comment section below!