Rafael Nadal: "I’m not super picky"

Rafael Nadal He got up limp after sleeping as the fourteenth champion at Roland Garros. A few hours off but the most successful tennis player in history, the 22nd Grand Slams, smiled and happily evaluated his sensations the next day, after a tournament he endured due to injections of anesthesia into his left foot, where he will undergo a new treatment this week. Attends special envoys of the Spanish media. Affable and direct.

How do you feel physically after too much effort?

Well, I’m fine, in the end physically I’m fine. I won’t lie to you, I’ve been very well for two weeks. Sometimes when you’re playing long matches, you’re painful, but surprisingly, and I had almost no training before this tournament, I played matches for more than 4 hours, against Felix (Auger-Aliassime), against Novak ( Djokovic). ), We had been with Zverev for three hours, but the following mornings on a physical level I woke up well. At this point in my career and at my age, I am surprisingly physically fit.

Another night, normal?

No, because my foot hurts. It is so. When I woke up and after two and a half weeks drinking a lot of anti-inflammatories, painkillers, almost every six hours, because there was no other option. I can’t afford to accept this ‘in eternum’, and now the issue is complicated.

How long is the anesthesia?

It depends, it’s not mathematical, but it takes about seven or eight hours.

And how did you play with your sleeping foot? Are you training?

One thing should be clear. So that we can understand each other, which is easy to think about. They produce a remote sensory nerve block. If your machine falls asleep, you cannot move your foot. After some surgery to remove the pain you can not, impossible, your foot is left out of control. My sensory nerve is sleeping. Nor is he a mathematician. There are days when you get a little sleepy. Eventually my fingers fell asleep as well. The feeling is worse, it’s a fact. But somehow you still have control over the ankle: less than if you weren’t sleeping on it, but somehow you still control it enough to be able to compete.

Does he play by memory with his insensitive foot, by automatisms?

You have control over the foot, what happens is you have no sensitivity. And there may be a little more risk when it comes to twisting your ankle and stuff. But for the rest, I assure you, playing with your foot asleep or not with your foot asleep, it doesn’t matter if there is no sensitivity, for me it’s Havana. From being lame I was playing without pain, it was a fact, unfortunately. And even if it can’t last, and at least, ultimately, we have to be realistic: I can win the tournament because I can move and run.

With a positive mindset?

I know I can play battles, because with the sleep of your foot you can play, but having the ability to put it all aside and be able to focus on tennis and play at the level I have, it means that in thought I was fully prepared to face the challenge.

Now can he go on the boat to fish or bathe without idols? Maybe tomorrow?

Tomorrow, no pain, no. For example, last year I finished Roland Garros, and we have to be realistic, I was crippled for two and a half weeks. When I came out against Novak Djokovic, the fourth set was already a disaster. Then I couldn’t get down for two and a half weeks. But eventually, when you stop playing for a while, the first few weeks are bad. But later, when I stopped playing tennis for a month and a half, in my daily life it wasn’t a problem. The time will come when it will stop hurting. It bothers me, but it’s not the pain I feel when I train.

Will you show your foot? Scary?

If you don’t record it, I’ll show it to you later without any problems (laughs). I will be happy to show you. Well, you won’t like it. But I can show you without a problem.

Do you trust the new treatment?

If we’re not optimistic we won’t do it, but we don’t know it. The goal was clear: it was to produce a pulsatile radiofrequency on the nerve to try to achieve the sensation I had when I played with my foot asleep, which was to keep it permanent. With this, if it works, it will remove some sensitivity from the top of the foot, but if it works, there’s one good thing: with distance blocks is shown that I can play. If this treatment is able to work and touch my nerve and permanently remove the feeling of pain, the problem will not be solved, but being able to continue playing will be solved, which is the goal for now. And let’s see what happens. I’m used to the step-by-step. And if you do things, try to do it with the thought that things will go well, then we’ll see.

Are you afraid of something? In those holes?

It hurts, I won’t fool you. The piercing of the needle is painful. Depending on the site more painful or less painful. I’ll tell you it’s clearly tolerable because otherwise, we wouldn’t do it, but doing it twenty minutes before getting off the track every day, well, it’s not pleasant. Stitches no longer scare me. Unfortunately, I made holes to be boring. I’m used to it, I trust the people around me. In that sense, I have a great team by my side, not only in sports, but also medically. During my career, we often made the right decisions and sometimes we were wrong. This is what it is.

A great team.

I have the same team all my life, practically. Toni is gone, but I still talk to her every day. Carlos (Moyà) is the newest in that sense. Well, Marc (López), although in some way or he was not in my daily team, but he was many times as if he was part of the team because we trained a thousand times together, he came to Mallorca to train many times, in some tournaments we live together and now I am with him as part of the team. It was a great team, but not only for my needs, but also for them. Because not everyone can afford to travel every week. At this point in my career, having Marc helps me, at the teaching level, but also at the training level. He has a great level of tennis and a level of training in specific things that I need many times and this is all I can do. Having someone like him helps me.

Is Parcheesi part of the therapy?

Depending on the day. There are days when therapy is reversed because I have to put up with Marc, who has no idea (he jokes). We laughed. Parcheesi had to spend an hour and a half, two, without realizing it. And it’s also a way to release machines. Not all the time you are on mobile. For me this is something positive. You are with the team, playing, without knowing the mobile before games or when you are at the airport between hours. It’s just a mess and it’s a competition that we have between us and we laugh at. We have an annual ranking.

Who won?

I used to go for one, but now I don’t know exactly. Now I don’t know if my dad missed me, without playing!

Sportingly, what do you like most about this Roland Garros?

At the tennis level it has important value because it was able to beat the very good man. On a mental level because eventually, to my personal satisfaction, I value the mental issue more than others, after I live my life after Indian Wells with a broken rib. In Rome, after a set and a little more I was lame and after many days I couldn’t train. I showed that I was ready for the challenge.

14 that title, no one can beat him.

It seems, but not impossible. Is it very difficult? Yes. Even though I don’t like it, I can be realistic about the difficulty it has and all the circumstances that have to be given for it to happen. But, ultimately, if I did it, I think it could be repeated. I will not be superelect. It’s obvious that a lot of events have to happen, which in my case, have happened, but it’s going to be difficult. This is clear.

This is the first time it has chain the Australian Open and Roland Garros. Can you consider completing the Grand Slam in a year?

Nakakabaliw. And more as we are. And even perfection seems crazy to me because it’s something nothing has been done since Rod Laver. The one that came closest was Novak last year. It’s crazy to think. I don’t even consider it. Beyond winning the Grand Slam, he will sign so the four can play.

Won from 2005 to 2022, what does this tell you?

I don’t know, what it tells you is many years ago, the first thing. The second thing I was able to do, I suppose, was against the possibilities. Mine the first the first, it is not an answer to say they said that, no, no, I thought that I would not have a career as long as I am having it. Within all the things that happen to me, the illusion and the determination to keep going is always maintained. I have the right people by my side who have definitely helped me to keep going.

Can you imagine your life without tennis?

I think that as I have experienced many times in my career that I had to lose the competition for many months due to injuries. I always have fun outside of tennis. It’s not something that makes me drowsy or have any fear in my life after tennis. I have and always have many things that make me happy more than tennis. On the physical level, what I have, I have. I think, at the foot level, if I wanted to, I would be able to eliminate the pain in a pretty specific way. What was happening was that to get rid of the pain I had to do an operation to fix my foot, where, with fixing my foot, I could not continue playing tennis.