Rafael Nadal never believed he would be a Grand Slam champion and was “amazed” at each of his 22 major victories, the Spaniard has told Eurosport’s Alize Lim. Nadal expects 2024 to be his final year on the ATP Tour before retirement. Nadal sits second to Novak Djokovic’s record tally of 24 Slam titles. He is set to return at the Brisbane International in January ahead of the Australian Open.
Rafael Nadal never believed he would be a Grand Slam champion and was “amazed” at each of his 22 major victories, the Spaniard has told Eurosport’s Alize Lim.
Nadal expects 2024 to be his final year on the ATP Tour before retirement, capping an incredible career that has been him rival Novak Djokovic and Roger Federer to be considered the greatest male player of all-time.
However, the man from Mallorca was not always destined for greatness as he revealed one of the secrets to his success was a laser focus on the next job at hand.
“When I was a kid, I never said to myself ‘I want to win a Grand Slam, I want to win Grand Slams, I want to be the best’. I was thinking about the tournament of the next week,” Nadal told Lim during a meeting in Vienna.
“And when I won my first Grand Slam, I thought it was going to be the only one I’d win. And then, every time, I won a Grand Slam. I was amazed, I thought, now I can really relax. It’ll probably be my last one. Now I’ve achieved something and that’s already huge.”
The 37-year-old has not played in nearly a year since the 2022 Australian Open and underwent hip surgery in June.
Nadal has tried to play down expectations of what he can achieve before bringing down the curtain on his career, with his comeback .
Lim, though, believes Nadal will have high hopes of adding to his 22 Grand Slams and closing the gap on Djokovic’s record tally of 24.
“He’s someone who lives in the moment, in the here and now, and that’s his strength. I think he must have ambitions deep down on his return,” said Lim, a former pro on the WTA Tour.
“I get the impression that it’s not him now who’s talking like that…he’s shown me in the discussion, and that’s what I deeply felt, that in fact that’s what the Rafa mentality was all along, that’s how Rafa worked.”
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The former world number one has plummeted to 668 in the rankings during his injury lay-off but is eligible for a protected ranking as he has not competed in any event for at least six months.
“There are many possibilities, that it is my last year, and I am going to enjoy the tournaments in that way,” Nadal said earlier this month, but he does not want to put a definite timeline on retirement until he knows how his body reacts to the rigours of being back on Tour.
“I do not want to announce it because in the end I do not know what can happen and I have to give myself the opportunity not to say one thing and then I can be a slave of what I have said.
“I think it is going to be like that but I can’t be 100% sure to come back to compete and if suddenly things and my physique allows me to continue and I enjoy what I do why am I going to set a deadline? I think it makes no sense.”
Should Nadal step away in 2024 he will become the second member of the sports “Big Three” to do so after Federer retired in 2022.
Djokovic’s stellar 2023, winning three Slams, has moved the Serbian two clear of Nadal in the battle for the most male singles Grand Slams in history.
But Djokovic is hoping to be reacquainted with his long-time rival for at least one more time.
The pair have faced off a record 59 times, with Djokovic edging the head-to-head 30-29.
“Would be nice for the sport to have at least one more match between Nadal and me,” Djokovic said at the ATP Tour finals.
“That’s the biggest rivalry – in terms of matches played – that this sport ever had so hopefully that can happen. He’s a big warrior, somebody who never gives up and with all the injuries he’s had, keeps going.”
