Uncle Toni spills the beans on Rafael Nadal’s shocking retirement plans
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Toni Nadal and Rafael Nadal
Rafael Nadal’s former coach and uncle Toni recently suggested in an interview that the former World No.1 and 22-time Grand Slam champion may have many more years to play professionally if he believes he could win and his body was able to cope.
“I’m not a fortune teller, I don’t know. I think that as long as he feels he has a chance of winning, he will continue. When he sees that he has no options, if he goes to a tournament and has no chance of winning, I don’t think he will play. In the end, he has won too much to fold badly,” Toni told Diario AS in an interview.
“Federer went five years without winning a Grand Slam, but he was there, he was doing semi-finals, finals… he knew he could win. In fact, after five years he won three more because he felt like he had options. That is what leads the way. How much time does Rafa have left? I don’t know, he will clearly depend on his rivals, on his body,” he added.
Rafael Nadal rises to World No.2, year-end top spot not a distant possibility
Nadal overtook Norway’s Casper Ruud for the No.2 spot in the ATP rankings after he lost to Japan’s Yoshihito Nishioka in the quarterfinals at Seoul on Friday.
This meant that for the first time since 2000, two men from the same country are at the No.1 and No.2 place in the ATP rankings, that is, Spain’s Carlos Alcaraz and Nadal. The last time this happened, it was Andre Agassi and Pete Sampras from USA at 1 or 2.
Nadal is currently less than 1000 points behind Alcaraz in the live rankings with the Paris Masters and ATP Finals both offering lucrative ranking points at stake.
If Nadal can win at the hard courts in Paris, he can really bridge the gap as he did not even play the tournament last year while Alcaraz reached the third round, and will be defending points.
Both Nadal and Alcaraz, however, did not compete in the ATP Finals marquee event last year, with Alcaraz not even qualified for the tournament, having only recently reached the Top 8, after which he monumentally climbed to World No.1 post winning the US Open.
Interestingly, 19-year-old Alcaraz also became the youngest World No.1 in the history of men’s tennis following his first major win at Flushing Meadows this year, overtaking former Australian player Lleyton Hewitt by a few months.
There are some that are already debating whether Alcaraz can go on to become the Greatest of All Time, even speculating that he could eclipse the 30 Grand Slam mark in the future, including his coach and former French Open champion Juan Carlos Ferrero.
Also Read: Paula Badosa slams press for objectifying female tennis players, forgiving men for their mistakes
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Ashish Maggo
(191 Articles Published)