Nadal on retirement: “I can hold one more year, but why? To say goodbye in every tournament? I don’t have that ego”

The Spaniard says he is not worried about the next chapter in his life and his happiness is not dependent on playing tennis

DPPI / Panoramic

Simon Cambers

November 18, 2024

Rafael Nadal has been consistent in his reasons for deciding to retire at the end of this year and on Monday, he repeated his explanation, saying his body no longer allowed him to be consistently competitive.

The 38-year-old, who hopes to be a part of Spain’s Davis Cup team this week in what is his last professional event, said he could probably have played on for another year but it would have been virtually pointless because he would not be playing the kind of tennis he has been used to over a glorious career which brought him 22 Grand Slam titles.

Asked if his decision, which he announced in September, was due to a new injury, Nadal said no.

“No, not new injury,” he said in Malaga on Monday. “It’s about the things that I went through, and, I mean, with the surgery last year, and I don’t gonna add the rest of the things that I had, but a few ones, make me feel that I cannot be enough competitive, and I am not able to enjoy my daily basis the way that I need to be competitive at the highest level, no?

“So at the end of the day, all relate to the question of myself is about, OK, I can hold for one more year, but why? To say goodbye in every single tournament, I don’t have that ego to need that.

“So at the end is about a feeling that I have been thinking for a long time. For me, today don’t make sense or to keep going knowing that I don’t have the real chance to be competitive the way that I like to be competitive, because my body is not able to give me the possibility to do that very often.”

Nadal x Ferrer x Moya 🌟🇪🇸

A legendary trio on Centre Court! #DavisCup | @RFETenis pic.twitter.com/vFWazH6rSJ
— Davis Cup (@DavisCup) November 15, 2024

Nadal: “I am not worried about the next chapter”

Nadal said the thing he will miss most about playing tennis is the adrenalin rush that comes with competition but said he was ready to move into retirement.

“I am not worried about the next chapter in my life,” he said. “I have been always happy without tennis, and I had a lot of moments in my life that I was not able to play tennis because of injuries, so I spent a lot of months doing other things. Is true that during recovery so now is a different approach.

“But at the same time always accept the challenge of an important change in my life that for everyone, when you have important changes in your life, you need to accept the process and accept that the things at the beginning gonna be a little bit, I don’t know if difficult, but different, and you need to respect the process, no? So I don’t know how the things going to be.”