SPORT: MARY HANNIGANreviews Rafa: My StoryBy Rafael Nadal, with John Carlin Sphere, 304pp. £17.99
IT'S NOT UNHEARD OF for sports figures to publish autobiographies with titles along the lines of My Lifewhen they're barely out of their teens. Wayne Rooney, for example, told his story (presumably the first of several instalments) when he was just 21.
So it’s with a certain trepidation that these books are approached, as they tend to reveal little. With their careers in full flow, their protagonists have images to protect and promote, so rarely is anything laid bare.
At 25, Rafael Nadal can hardly be classed as a veteran either, but, remarkably, it will be 10 years next April since he won his first match on the professional tennis tour and six since he claimed his first grand slam.
He might be trailing in Novak Djokovic’s wake these days, as everyone else is, but Nadal is already regarded as one of the greatest tennis players in history, now with 10 grand-slam titles to his name. He has, then, quite a story to tell already. And choosing the journalist and author John Carlin to ghostwrite it guaranteed that it would be a story told with candour.
Carlin is a columnist with the Spanish newspaper El Paísbut is perhaps best known as the author of the book on Nelson Mandela that was turned into the film Invictus. As a writer on both sport and politics, he would have found the move from Mandela to Nadal effortless enough. While, naturally, reluctant to draw comparisons between the two men, Carlin talked recently of how he was drawn to both because of the similarities in their personalities: the absence of ego, despite their status in their respective worlds, and the inherent decency.
His fondness for Nadal is evident, then, and his chief goal for the book is, accordingly, to “humanise the warrior”. He succeeds, not least when the Spaniard opens up about the bully that was his Uncle Toni, the man who has coached him since he was four.
“I am not one of those athletes whose life stories are all about overcoming dark beginnings in their rise to the top. I had a fairy-tale childhood,” he says early in the book, but his account of his treatment by Toni suggests that his early years were anything but idyllic, even if his family life was happy.
Recognising his nephew’s potential, Toni set about toughening him up, his methods often sending Nadal – not yet 10 – home from training in tears. He told him he was a “mummy’s boy”, fired tennis balls at him if he lost concentration, roared and cursed at him, and at times was beyond cruel. Nadal, for example, once forgot to bring water when he turned up for a match at the age of seven. It was “a very hot day”, but, as punishment for his forgetfulness, Toni refused to give him any liquids. He did it, Nadal says, “so that I’d learn to take responsibility”.
But Nadal harbours no bitterness towards his uncle; in fact, he is eternally grateful to him. “If I hadn’t cried as I did at the injustice and abuse he heaped on me, maybe I would not be the player I am today,” he says.
When Nadal won the Spanish under-12 title, Toni’s response was not to give him a congratulatory hug but to furnish him with a list of the winners from the previous two decades, noting how many were never heard of again. That brought an abrupt halt to the 11-year-old’s happiness. The point was clear enough: their work had only begun.
Even now, despite all Nadal’s success, Toni’s impact on his psyche is evident in his insecurity and, at times, his startling lack of self-confidence. He talks about “moments of cowardice” in his career, an accusation often thrown at him by his uncle when he first started playing tennis in his home town of Manacor, on the island of Majorca.
Although always publicly gracious and serene in defeat, as he was again when he lost to Djokovic in this month’s US Open final, behind closed doors it’s a very different scene. When he was beaten by Roger Federer in the 2007 Wimbledon final he was left “utterly destroyed . . . I cried incessantly for half an hour in the dressing room. Tears of disappointment and self-recrimination”.
A year later, though, he experienced “an invasion of the purest joy” when he beat Federer to win his first Wimbledon title in what was, many claim, the greatest tennis match in history – and he brings it to life again by analysing it in the finest of detail.
Toni, presumably, didn’t provide him with a list of previous winners, lest he get notions about himself, but his name sits comfortably alongside the likes of Federer, Pete Sampras, John McEnroe, Björn Borg and Rod Laver. One of the greats. Not that he realises it himself.
Mary Hannigan is an Irish Timessportswriter
