Rafael Nadal

[Gama]

World No. 2 Rafael Nadal insists he will keep working hard and playing at a high intensity to be competitive at every tournament this year.

"I will play like this until my mind and my physical performance say, 'finish'," said Nadal, who has been training for the past 10 days, at the Qatar ExxonMobil Open in Doha on Monday.

"If you are working very hard physically, but your mental game is not there, you don't feel competitive, you won't feel hungry to keep winning or to keep fighting every ball. If you're not ready to compete and to combine both things, [it] will be very difficult to be competitive in all the tournaments."
The Spaniard starts the 2012 ATP World Tour season 4,035 South African Airways ATP Rankings points behind No. 1-ranked Novak Djokovic, who he lost to in six finals last year.

"I think everybody thinks that Djokovic will be difficult to beat. Not myself. You cannot be on top every time. I lost against Djokovic in all the finals, but I only [just] lost against him. That's a really positive thing. He did better than me and that's it.

"I don't know if I can beat him. The only thing that I know is I have to practise to improve my tennis, and that's what I going to try to do. For the rest of my career, I don't know if that's going to be enough to beat him or to lose him 100 more times. I cannot predict that.

"What I can predict is I going to work hard to try to be competitive enough to play with well against everybody, not only against him, because first thing - you have to be in finals. That's a very difficult thing to do."

http://www.atpworldtour.com/News/Tennis/2012/01/1/Doha-Preview-Nadal.aspx

[Gama]

Rafael Nadal Qatar Open 2012 Press Conference Transcript - 1st round

Spoiler: pokaži

R. NADAL/P. Kohlschreiber 6‑3, 6‑7, 6‑3

Q. Maybe you could just talk a little bit about the match. It looked like you were coasting in the first set, and then it got real tough as it went along and then you came back.
RAFAEL NADAL: In general, for me, was a really positive match. I think a played a very good first set. The only moment that I didn't play well was the beginning of the second and after the tiebreak. For the rest, I think I played a very solid match.
I'm very happy about my level. I really played better than what I thought. So everything was really positive. Most important thing is I played really correct, really well, and I am through. So that's, you know, very important to keep having matches on the court with what's going on.

Q. How is your shoulder doing?
RAFAEL NADAL: My shoulder is fine. I said yesterday it's not 100% perfect. I feel something when I start at the beginning of practice, beginning of when I start to play, but later, after three, four minutes, when I get warmed up, I feel the shoulder with perfect conditions. So that's important thing. You know, the shoulder needs days like today to get the power, you know, but in general I'm happy.

Q. Are you starting to get a bit of rhythm with the new racquet? Are you starting to get the feel of it?
RAFAEL NADAL: I think I did a few things very well today. I hit very good with my backhand. I really believe that the racquet can help me with the backhand.
With the forehand I felt I hit the ball most of the times where I want to hit the ball. Few days ago and yesterday in the practice, you know, when I tried to hit the ball, sometimes I hit it a little bit left, sometimes too early. That's why I didn't have totally the control of that, you know, the speed of the racquet, no?
But today when we have rallies, I really felt that I have really positive control of the ball. Not perfect, for sure, but in general I think I felt most of the shots the right way. So that's really positive.

Q. Have you changed racquets before in your career?
RAFAEL NADAL: Yeah, I did at the beginning of 2005. 2005? Sorry. I did it at the beginning of 2004. 2004? 2005? Which year I played final in Auckland? '04? I think so. So 2004.

Q. Are what was the change in the racquet then? Lighter or heavier?
RAFAEL NADAL: No, it was a little bit heavier, just in the top of the...

Q. How long did it take you to adjust to the change? A month? Several weeks?
RAFAEL NADAL: I really don't know. Let's see, no? Maybe in a few more days I am adjusted. But when you decide to make any change, the beginning, you have to accept that the things won't be perfect, but you have to think when you have the change it's because we think it can help me more in the future. That's all.

Q. Two years ago when you changed the string of your racquet, yellow one to the black one, would you say is the same process?
RAFAEL NADAL: No.

Q. It's more difficult?
RAFAEL NADAL: Well, especially that year when I changed from 2009 to 2010, I played final of Davis Cup, too. But straight after the Davis Cup I start to practice. I was able to practice for a month.
And with the string, I really had better feeling with the string from the beginning. That's nothing ‑‑you don't change the weight. You change the string, so the string can work better, can work worse. You need time to adapt your game to the string, but seriously, that string work very well on my game from the beginning.
The racquet, you feel something different when you are playing, but that's all the time, and the bad thing is 2009 I had the chance to practice for a month. This year I wanted to do the same, because on Wednesday I was in court for practice, but I had to stop on Friday for two weeks.
The normal thing was didn't have the change because I didn't have time to adapt to the new racquet, but seriously I felt if I am not doing now, I will not do it for the rest of the season, so that's the moment. If I start the season with some troubles, we accept and we take the risk, but hopefully I believe that I can manage very well, no?
Today was surprising match for me and positive one.

Q. Back in the second set, was it Kohlschreiber coming out ‑‑obviously he went to the net a lot more, but what happened early on that made it difficult for you? Was it him being more aggressive, or was it something with your play that made it difficult?
RAFAEL NADAL: I think he is one of the players that has, for sure, lower ranking than what his level says. That's a lot of people, most people think that. He's No. 43 of the world, but my feeling, his level is like top 25.
So he can play at very high level. He has fantastic shots. His serve work very well for him moments today, and his return, sometimes I felt that I was serving okay, good, and sometimes his return was very fast. So was difficult.
He's a complete player. You can say what he really is not doing well on his game, and you can analyze him. And he has a good backhand, a good forehand, positive volley, not bad serve, good serve, his movements are good. In general, he's a really complete player.
Sometimes, you know, he has a few mistakes, but in general, he's one of these players that is not easy to play against. The only way to beat him is play well, because you don't want to feel like he's having mistakes for nothing. You have to play aggressive against him.
You have to move him very well, because he has a fantastic backhand, and, you know, he's a tough player. But he did well. He played aggressive. He played with very good returns at the beginning of the second. I went a little bit behind the baseline. That's why. That's why.

Q. After winning two or three doubles finals here with Marc Lopez, we were surprised not to see you playing doubles this year. Why? Is it because it makes you tired on the way to the Australian Open?
RAFAEL NADAL: No, I was in the prelist of the tournament with him, but with the problem with my shoulder, I didn't have ‑‑I really didn't know if I would be here one week and a half ago, so I said, If I am here, I have to play singles. Later I have to play doubles.
You know, the most important thing is the health, so cannot take this risk. That's, for me, sadly don't have the chance to play doubles, because in general, for me, the doubles help me to keep practicing well.

[Dejan]

Back to the Struggle

Spoiler: pokaži

Back to the Struggle

Fifth in a series on players to watch in 2012.

As the new year begins, there are two very different ways of looking at Rafael Nadal. On the one hand, there's isn't much to say about him and his future that hasn’t been asked and answered before; on the other hand, he remains the game’s most popular object of speculation. For the better part of 2011, the tennis world wanted to know: What was wrong with Rafa? How did Novak Djokovic solve the man we thought was going to be the sport's next king? Was Nadal declining, slowing down, losing his serve, losing his motivation, losing his hair, ready to snap, ready to pull a Borg and walk away forever? What could he do to turn it around?

Other than the hair loss bit, which is a definite, there aren’t any good answers out there. It’s even difficult to decide whether Nadal’s 2011 was good or bad, a success or a failure. He essentially lost to one other player. On earth. He won a Slam, reached the finals of two others, and clinched the Davis Cup. As for the final-round losses to that one other player, Nadal was still proud, as he said after the last of them, at the U.S. Open, that he had made it, that he was there. At the same time, it was obviously an unsatisfying season for him, especially coming off his banner 2010. Nadal surrendered his Wimbledon and U.S. Open titles and couldn’t even defend his clay turf in Madrid and Rome—that really was a new low. At both the start of the season and the end, Nadal admitted that it was tougher now for him to find the motivation on a daily basis.

So can he turn it around in 2012, and if so, how? That question is also impossible to answer, until he plays Novak Djokovic, or at least until he wins another major. Nadal can add weight to his racquet, hit his serve 10-m.p.h. harder, take his forehand earlier, crack his backhand flatter, and beat every other player in the world love and love, but he won’t have done anything more than what he did in 2011 unless and until he dethrones his nemesis. It’s an odd position to be in: No matter how well Rafa thinks he’s playing, he won’t have any idea whether he’s getting closer to his goal until he actually sees Djokovic on the other side of the net. Just as discouraging as the losses to the Serb is the fact that at both Wimbledon and the U.S. Open Nadal had played himself into top form as the tournament progressed, thrashed Andy Murray in the semis with some of his best tennis of the season, made many people believe that this time he was going to end the Djoker’s run, and then still lost. Badly. With that in the back of his mind, Nadal will never be able to feel confident that he's making any progress as long as Djokovic is still in the draw.

Given that peculiar psychological situation, all Nadal can do for now is try to improve his game piece by piece, with a distant eye toward the ever-looming Nole. He’s begun to do that, by adding weight to his racquet so he can “have more winners,” by at least talking about playing closer to the baseline, by being more aggressive with his backhand to try to counter Djokovic’s superior two-hander, by getting the “coordination” back on his serve and the miles per hour he had with it in 2010. (He might want to re-watch the video below of himself with Uncle Toni and Oscar Borras fixing his take-back in 2010; go to the 4-minute mark to see a skeptical Rafa getting a serving lesson).


We’ll see if any of it works, once Nadal and Djokovic finally play. The Serb had all of the answers last year; he won by attacking, he won by defending, and he even trumped Nadal’s trump card by outlasting him in rallies. At this point, there’s isn’t a ton that Nadal can change. In the past, he used to say that he was always looking to improve, and he tweaked his game regularly to do that. But as of 2011, he no longer seemed to believe that. He said that there wasn’t much chance left for him to get significantly better. "I have my game," he said, and he had to live and die with it.

That may sound pessimistic, but it also sounds about right. Nadal is generally his own best analyst, and there really is a point when your game is your game and your strokes are your strokes. If he isn’t going to add a major net-rushing component, and he isn’t, he’s going to have to do what he’s always done and hope that Djokovic’s level will drop. The only time Nadal had success in their Wimbledon and U.S. Open finals was when he was down two sets and he came out swinging, with nothing to lose. Can he be that aggressive and accurate from start to finish in a three-of-five-setter? That might be what it takes.

For now, we keep speculating about future matchups with Djokovic, while Nadal tries to stave off everyone ranked below him. What did his loss to Gael Monfils today signal, if anything? Rafa claimed that he was generally happy with his game (though he did have to add the word “seriously” at the end of his statement, as if the reporter he was answering was giving him a look of disbelief). The good news is that Nadal appears to be hellbent on staying positive this year. The bad news is that Monfils, who had only beaten him once in nine previous matches, appeared to have watched and maybe even learned something from Djokovic’s wins over Rafa. The Frenchman served him wide in the deuce court, and took him even wider into the ad court with his two-handed backhand—très Nole.

All we can do now is watch what happens in Australia, where there will be a lot of other players who have learned the Djokovic Rules for playing him (executing them is another matter). The only thing we know for sure is that Nadal will make it worth our while to keep watching him. He’s no longer No. 1, but he’s used to that. He’s no longer on the young side of the sport, but he’s resigned to that. He’s struggling and suffering again. If the past is any guide, he's going to like that.

[Gama]

Stigao i Rafa u Melburn

[Dejan]

[Dejan]

[Gama]

Nadal at Bacardi Limited 'Champions Drink Responsibly' event at Encore, St Kilda in Melbourne City


Jos puuuno slika ovde

[alcesta]

Danas baš svako može da ima nalog na Tviteru
http://twitter.com/#!/RafasRollingBag

[Gama]

Rafael Nadal Australian Open 2012 tournament Interview - January 15th

[Starsica]

Knee crack gives Nadal a scare

When you play tennis for a living you need to have working knees.

If you don’t think that’s true you can check it out with Australian Open second seed Rafael Nadal, one of the true talents in the game. Nadal has won 10 Grand Slam titles and 36 other trophies including the 2008 Olympic gold medal. But he’s also had way too much trouble with tendinitis in both knees during his titanic career.

So you can imagine the dread he felt yesterday when he was doing nothing more than sitting in a chair when he heard his right knee crack.

“Yesterday afternoon happened the more strange thing ever happen to me,” revealed Nadal, after his 6-4 6-1 6-1 win over American qualifier Alex Kuznetsov on Monday. “I stand up. I felt the knee a little bit strange ... the knee stays with unbelievable pain ... I have no movement on the knee.”

Uh-oh! Would Nadal, the 2009 Australian Open, see his shot at winning a second title at Melbourne Park over before he even started the tournament this year?

The good news is that wasn’t the case. Tournament officials scrambled to organise an MRI for the 25-year-old Spaniard on Sunday and he came through with flying colours. Nothing wrong on those pictures – the knee was good to go. But that didn’t prevent Nadal from arriving on court looking something like the walking wounded with heavy wrapping.

The even better news for Nadal is the heavy-duty treatment he endured on the knee on Sunday enabled him to make quick work of Kuznetsov in securing the first-round victory in 1 hour, 46 minutes on Monday. But it was clear from the scoreline that Nadal spent some of the first set feeling out his knee, much more so than feeling out his No.167 ranked opponent.

“I started the match with a little bit of scare at the beginning and nervous because I was really disappointed yesterday,” Nadal said. “But, you know, after the first 10 games that was scare, I started to play with normal conditions.

“The best thing is I felt the knee very well ... I was ready to play and I played a fantastic match.”

Truth be told – and no disrespect to Kuznetsov – but Nadal’s superiority over the American would probably have enabled him to stand tall with a win if he hopped on one leg. While Nadal’s a major force in the game, Kuznetsov’s a 24-year-old with a resume still waiting to be filled.

Kuznetsov’s now played in four Grand Slam events, winning one of five matches at the majors. He has a 0-12 record against players ranked in the top 100. However, it should be said that Kuznetsov was considered a highly promising prospect as a junior – he reached the 2004 Roland Garros junior boys’ final, but he hasn’t been able to find that form in the pros.

The lopsided match saw Nadal hit 42 winners to only 16 for Kuznetsov. Nadal won 11 of 13 points at the net to eight of 22 for Kuznetsov. Nadal won all 12 of his service games, saving the two break-point opportunities he presented to Kuznetsov, while the American had his serve broken six times in 12 service games.

Now that Nadal’s knee held up well for the opening match, he seems to have little trepidation about how it will hold up for potentially six more matches here at Melbourne Park. Next up for Nadal is Tommy Haas, the dual German-American citizen who at 33 years and 9 months is the oldest player in the men’s draw. Haas defeated 19-year-old American qualifier Denis Kudla 7-6(5) 3-6 6-0 7-5.

“I am really confident that having the worst feeling that I ever had in my knee yesterday and today was able to play,” Nadal said. “I have fantastic hope that going to happen the same for (the day) after tomorrow.”

[Gama]

[Delester]

Spoiler: pokaži

[alcesta]

Jedan od najlepših tekstova o Rafi koje sam skoro pročitala:
http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/751 ... pen-finall

[harper lee]

Jedan od najlepših tekstova o Rafi koje sam skoro pročitala:
http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/751 ... pen-finall

Jeste, procitah ga tamo™. Izuzetan tekst.

[Delester]

dobar tekst, ali malo zakasneo jer su to scenarija koja su vidjana u proteklih par godina toliko puta, ali u obrnutim ulogama i ne secam se da se neko osvrtao ilijadom , poredak jos davno bio uspostavljen i ko god bi mu zapretio i ipak na kraju bivao porazen nije bio ovoliko zaljen. jer su se neke stvari podrazumevale. proci ce jos malo dok ne pocnu ponovo da se podrazumevaju, ovog puta ce samo raspored biti drugaciji.
a narocito mi je nekako bzvz uzdizanje i iznenadno razumevanje za nadala od strane fedovih navijaca sada kada ih novak satire obojicu, potseca me ne ono decije udruzivanje snaga.
edit-slova