I had an early window to appreciate Nadal as both player and person, having covered him since his first US Open in 2003. When he arrived that summer in New York, the Spaniard’s reputation was already ascendant among the cognoscenti, who’d caught word of his early clay-court success in Europe. Before Nadal had played his first match in Flushing Meadows, I happened to find myself standing next to him in line in Player Dining, where players and coaches take all their meals “on campus.” They are usually in a rush to eat and schedule practice sessions, especially during those hectic opening days of the tournament. Most players – who understandably have more pressing things on their minds – rather gruffly bark their food orders and move on.

As I stood next to Rafa, as the world would soon come to know him, pondering my own food order, I eavesdropped as he patiently and graciously addressed the older, Latina lunch ladies. He spoke to each of them in Spanish as though he were speaking to his abuela (grandma), unfailingly polite and deferential as he ordered his favorite dish, pasta and shrimp. I’d never seen another player say por favor and muchas gracias more.

A day later I sat courtside on Grandstand for the 17-year-old’s second-round match against Younes El Aynaoui, a Top 20 player. The Spaniard was everything he was advertised to be: a maelstrom of brute force and inexhaustible determination. His corkscrew forehand torqued violently with topspin, finishing high above his head. He ran down every ball, even those seemingly already beyond him, and converted impossible defensive positions to offensive attacks in the blink of an eye. He leaped high in the air and pumped his left fist; his intensity was electrifying. That first glimpse of the youngster, a man-child whose game was already improbably mature, left an enduring impression – especially because it seemed so at odds with the gentle, quiet young man I’d seen the day before in the lunch line. 

Paul Annacone, who coached Pete Sampras and Roger Federer, recently addressed the qualities that make a champion, speaking specifically about Nadal. He said a player first needed physical talent, strength and mobility – a skillset most natural athletes are born with. Second was mental strength, principally the ability not to allow emotion to overwhelm him. And the third element was heart: an unconditional thirst for competing. “Can you play every point like your life depended on it?” Annacone asked rhetorically.

That last quality wholly defined Nadal within the geometric confines of a tennis court. Unlike some athletes who come from extreme hardship, the Spaniard emerged from a comfortable upper middle-class family, an enviable life on an idyllic Balearic island. And yet Nadal played tennis like those things were in jeopardy.

Unique among athletes programmed to project confidence or unremarkable blandness, Nadal frequently expressed self-doubt. About his game, his chances, his health, his place in history. Engrossed in a singular, 15-year rivalry with Federer, Nadal never hesitated to call the Swiss “the best in history”– even though throughout their careers it was the Spaniard who maintained a winning record against his peer, an advantage most pronounced in majors.

Nadal played through pain and adversity for much of his career. In 2022 he won his 14^th French Open title despite receiving daily pain-killing injections in his foot. As he dealt with repeated setbacks, late-period Nadal spoke with philosophic grace, using language that at times echoed the tenets of Zen Buddhism: mainly, that suffering exists and to address it requires accepting of one’s fate, deep concentration, ethical behavior and mindfulness.

"You need to be humble enough to go through this process and accept that you need to fight, and you need to accept that you are going to suffer," Nadal said at the 2022 US Open. 

After completing perhaps the greatest comeback of his career in the final of the 2022 Australian Open, where he roared back from two-sets-down to defeat Daniil Medvedev and capture his 21st major title at age 35, Nadal spoke not of strategy or how hard he fought, but of inner peace. "It is important to have true inner humility, not false humility, accepting that (when) it's not always good, bad moments are better tolerated.”

Nadal missed out on (or had to withdraw from) 16 Slams – four years’ worth! – because of injury. By comparison, Federer missed nine and Novak Djokovic four (though three of those four were due to COVID-19 restrictions). Counting both majors and ATP Masters events, Nadal missed 48, Federer 25 and Djokovic just 15. The Spaniard recognised how his injuries had handicapped him over the course of his career, but he also accepted that they were simply matters beyond his control. Nadal never wallowed in hypotheticals. About what his major and Masters tally might be had he not suffered so many injuries, Nadal said simply “If, if. If doesn’t exist.”

Nadal instead focused on what he could control. How he prepared. How hard he played each point. How he worked to improve. 

As he contemplated the coming twilight of his career in late 2023, sidelined and having missed three of the year’s four majors, Nadal said: “One of the keys for me to continue playing tennis (...) is that I have tolerated success and failure equally. Nothing is that big and nothing is that bad; there are good times and bad times."

Nadal’s final against Novak Djokovic at the Australian Open in 2012 came awfully close, though, to matching that operatic Wimbledon final. Stretching to 5 hours, 53 minutes, the contest was so enervating that chairs were brought out on court for the trophy presentation, to prop up the two weary and wobbly combatants. Neither could stand after nearly six hours on court.

Nadal – that noted clay-court specialist – also collected four singles crowns on hardcourt at the US Open and another two at the Australian Open.

Djokovic – who faced Nadal 28 times in ATP finals – said of the Spaniard: “The tenacity and intensity he brings on the court (…) is something very rarely seen in the history of the sport.”

“Impenetrable. He’s like a wall,” said the Serb.

Casper Ruud, whom Nadal dismissed soundly in the 2022 French Open final, was even more ominous about the challenge of facing the Spaniard. “First he takes your legs,” said the Norwegian. “Then he takes your mind.”

Looking ahead to playing his final French Open earlier this year, Nadal said that if he needed to “leave everything [on the court] and die in Paris, let it be what God wants.” If Roger Federer made the game look heavenly, Nadal’s more earthbound tennis laid bare exactly how much grueling effort he put into every shot, every sprint, every match – no matter the round or the importance of the tournament.

Nadal’s court coverage was so extraordinary that some disparaged him as a mere defensive retriever. Those critics missed by a wide margin what made Nadal so singular. The Spaniard was an extraordinary shotmaker. His tennis genius was different from Federer’s balletic artistry, but no less impressive.

Nadal’s unique lefty forehand was “the best in history, without question,” according to former No. 1 Jim Courier. “Clear-cut, the best. It was the most aggressive and the safest; it had pace, spin and margin.” Nadal struck it with extraordinary topspin (averaging about 3200 rpm, but could jump to 4000 rpm), making it impossibly heavy and hard to handle. Especially on clay, it whipped and dipped and ricocheted high off the court, causing righties with one-handed backhands innumerable problems (Federer struggled with it for most of their Lexus ATP Head2Head). One of Nadal’s signature shots was stepping way around his backhand to his extreme right, often into the doubles alley, to wallop impossibly-angled, inside-out forehand winners.

Nadal’s overhead and volley were also tops in the game – not necessarily what you’d expect from someone who customarily played so deep in the court.

Because there was such a relentless, punishing physicality to Nadal’s game, it was easy to overlook that the Mallorcan was a creative problem solver and an inveterate tinkerer. For the duration of his career, he strove to improve every facet of his game. Nadal fundamentally altered and beefed up his serve, which early in his career had functioned as little more than a point-starter. Under the tutelage of compatriot Carlos Moyà, Nadal added 10mph on his delivery to win free points and become a more imposing player on hard courts.

"I go to practice every day not to practise; I go to practice every day to try to learn something and to keep improving my level," Nadal said.

Nadal will always be remembered for being part of the Big Three,  a ruling triumvirate that dominated the finest era of men’s tennis in history. Nadal, Federer and Djokovic are inextricably linked, and not just because they are the only players to amass 20 or more slam titles. Their matches against each other were high-stakes battles of intrigue, opposing game styles and personalities, and rival fan bases.

Only rarely did another player succeed in penetrating their ranks: Andy Murray, sometimes included as the last member of a Big Four, with his three major victories; Stan Wawrinka, Federer’s muscular compatriot who on any given day was capable of beating any of them and who did beat both Djokovic and Nadal in slam title bouts; and Juan Martín del Potro, the big Argentine US Open winner who might have had more success blasting all three off the court had he not been so often sidelined by injury. But the Big Three’s dominance was so thorough that since 2004 – 20 years ago! – only nine major finals were contested that didn’t feature at least one member of the trio.

Over the course of two decades, those three athletes stood as exemplary ambassadors for the sport of tennis, raising its global profile. With Federer and now Nadal retired, and Djokovic conceivably not long from joining them, tennis fans could be forgiven for finding themselves nostalgic for their reign of greatness.