What does it mean to be Nadalian? The adjective surfaces in The Warrior: Rafael Nadal and His Kingdom of Clay, a detailed account of the Spanish tennis great’s career by Christopher Clarey, the long-time former New York Times tennis correspondent.
It’s a companion piece to Clarey’s Roger Federer biography, The Master (2021), but it’s also a portrait of Roland-Garros, aka the French Open, and a book that diligently situates Nadal in the wider sweep of tennis history as it relates to red clay.
Qualities considered Nadalian such as battling spirit, sportsmanship, courtesy and stubbornness, as well as his fondness for on-court rituals and second-language epigrams – dubbed “the Tao of Rafa” by sardonic ex-player Jim Courier – compete for space with a century of tennis names and off-court turning points. This might frustrate both Nadal fans and the Nadal-curious, though the logic of the project is as solid as his forehand.
The single Nadal match that best caught the public imagination is undoubtedly his victory over Federer in the final of Wimbledon 2008, while his tally of 22 Grand Slam titles is bettered on the men’s side only by Novak Djokovic, who has 24. But Nadal’s most remarkable achievement is his unparalleled haul of 14 titles at just one of those Grand Slam tournaments, the French, where a steel statue immortalises him in mid-stroke.
And yet the story of Nadal’s relationship with the mercurial Paris tennis crowds, as Clarey is well-placed to explain, is a complex one. Their attitude to his dominance may have been bookended by astonishment and affection, but there was also an extended spell of Nadal fatigue. Clarey, who locates French suspicions in the context of the era’s doping revelations within cycling and athletics, speaks to former anti-doping official Richard Ings, who says Nadal was added to target testing pools early but they “found nothing, not even a hint of something”.
This chapter, called The Backlash, combines with appropriately sharp words about Nadal’s lucrative, late-career ambassadorial role at the Saudi Tennis Federation to exemplify the journalistic value of a biography produced independently of its subject. Although its diversions can feel momentum-breaking, its recent publication at the peak of clay season still serves as an insightful reminder of his particular star appeal, now lost from the game.
