"RAFA" ~ by Rafael Nadal

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From Rafa's Facebook

Rafael Nadal
Hi everyone, after a year working with the well-known writer John Carlin, I want you to be the first to know that the book is due in August and and I want to share with you the title page. What do you think about it? Also, very soon I'll release the first chapter only for you . Rafa


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Rafael Nadal
Hola a todos, después de un año trabajando con el prestigioso escritor John Carlin. Os puedo adelantar que en Agosto saldrá mi libro, quiero compartir con vosotros en primicia cual será la portada, ¿qué os parece?

Además, muy pronto os dejaré el primer capítulo . Rafa








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Excerpt 1: Wimbledon 2008

The silence, that’s what strikes you when you play on Wimbledon’s Centre Court. You bounce the ball soundlessly up and down on the soft turf; you toss it up to serve; you hit it and you hear the echo of your own shot. And of every shot after that. Clack, clack; clack, clack.

The trimmed grass, the rich history, the ancient stadium, the players dressed in white, the respectful crowds, the venerable tradition all combine to enclose and cushion you from the outside world.

The feeling suits me; the cathedral hush of the Centre Court is good for my game. Because what I battle hardest to do in a tennis match is to quiet the voices in my head, to shut everything out of my mind but the contest itself and concentrate every atom of my being on the point I am playing. If I made a mistake on a previous point, forget it; should a thought of victory suggest itself, crush it.

The final of 2008 against Roger Federer was the biggest match of my life. I’d lost the previous two years in the final, both times against Federer, and my defeat in 2007, which went to five sets, left me utterly destroyed. I wept after that loss.

I cried incessantly for half an hour in the dressing room. Tears of disappointment and self-recrimination. One year later I was determined that whatever else gave way, this time my head would not . . . read the rest

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Excerpt 2: Before I Go into Battle

Before a big match my mental state is as taut as it is fragile. I have to follow my locker room rituals in the same order always. It’s like a great big matchstick structure: if every piece is not symmetrically in place, it can all fall down.

Forty-five minutes before facing Federer I began the last phase of my pre-game ritual. I took a cold shower. Freezing cold water. I do this before every match. It’s the point before the point of no return. Under the cold shower I enter a new space in which I feel my power and resilience grow.

I’m a different man when I emerge. I’m activated. I’m in “the flow”, as sports psychologists describe a state of alert concentration in which the body moves by pure instinct, like a fish in a current. Nothing else exists but the battle ahead.

I put on my earphones and listened to music. It sharpens that sense of flow, removes me further from my surroundings. While Titín, my physical therapist, bandaged my left foot, I put the grips on my rackets, all six I’d be taking on court. I always do this. They come with a black pre-grip.

I roll a white tape over the black one, spinning the tape around and around, working diagonally up the shaft. I don’t need to think about it, I just do it. As if in a trance.

After Titín had bandaged my knees, I stood up, got dressed, went to a basin, and ran water through my hair. Then I put on my bandanna. It’s another manoeuvre that requires no thought, but I do it slowly, carefully, tying it tightly and very deliberately behind the back of my head.

There’s a practical point to it: keeping my hair from falling over my eyes. But it’s also another moment in the ritual, another decisive moment of no return, like the cold shower, when my sense is sharpened that very soon I’ll be entering battle . . . read the rest.

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Excerpt 3: Family Crisis

On the first leg of the long journey back from the 2009 Australian Open, on the flight from Melbourne to Dubai, my father told me there were problems back home between himself and my mother.

I quickly figured out he meant a separation was on the cards. The news left me stunned. I didn’t talk to my father on the rest of the trip home.

My parents were the pillar of my life and that pillar had crumbled. The continuity I so valued in my life had been cut in half, and the emotional order I depend on had been dealt a shocking blow. Our family was close and united, there had been no conflict visible, all we had ever seen was harmony and good cheer.

Assimilating the news that my parents had been going through such a crisis after nearly 30 years of marriage was heartbreaking.

My family had always been the holy, untouchable core of my life, my centre of stability and a living album of my wonderful childhood memories. Suddenly, and utterly without warning, the happy family portrait had cracked. I suffered on behalf of my father, my mother and my sister, who were all having a terrible time.

But everybody was affected: my uncles and aunt, my grandparents, my nephews and nieces. Our whole world was destabilised, and contact between members of the family became, for the first time that I had been aware of, awkward and unnatural; no one knew at first how to react. Returning back home had always been a joy; now it became uncomfortable and strange . . . read the rest.

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Thanks for the excerpts Archie.. I ve heard that John Carlin is a good writer and speaks Spanish.. But isnt it too early for Rafa who is 25 years old, to write his autobiography?

And I wonder, is it right to post all the important parts from the bio on the internet? I guess The Telegraph must have bought the rights to post some serialised excerpts ..
Hope this doesnt affect the book's sales..

Reading the part about his parents divorce is so touching..

But the story of the Epic Match, Wimbledon 2008, brings back so many memories , the weather, the crowds, the royalty, the rain, and the match taking almost all day , and finally the trophy ceremony held in the dark... What a day it was.. Of course, I have both the video and the DVD of the match.. ;D


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A lengthy review of Rafa's book by Steve Flink/ Tennis channel

Steve Flink : "Rafa" is a story well told

On the eve of the U.S. Open, Rafael Nadal’s fittingly entitled new autobiography “Rafa”—done in collaboration with the gifted writer John Carlin—was released to the general public. I was too immersed in the tournament to start reading the book during the proceedings in New York, but over the past weekend I dove into the story of the inimitable Spaniard, and it was hard to put it down. Through the pages of the manuscript, Nadal comes across essentially the same way he has over his entire career—as a man of fundamental decency and unimpeachable integrity, an exceedingly humble individual, a player who tackles his professional pursuits with the utmost of seriousness, and a champion who takes absolutely nothing for granted no matter how much he has achieved.

Those who have appreciated Nadal’s unflinching intensity and his reservoir of pride will enjoy the book immensely because they will gain a deeper understanding of the man and the high pressure world in which he resides. They will be fascinated by the candid portrait he paints of the complex Uncle Toni, the architect of Nadal’s success in many ways. They will welcome the chance to learn more about Rafa’s mother, father, girlfriend, and other confidantes who have formed such a loyal web of supportiveness around the champion, and contributed with such utter reliability to his success. Nadal is only 25, and his evolution as a competitor and a personality is incomplete. A decade down the road, he might be even wiser to the ways of the world, and will surely no longer be competing on the ATP World Tour. That might be a time when Nadal would be at greater liberty to comment on his innermost feelings on his friends, relatives and rivals.

Yet the fact remains that this is a remarkably mature, thoughtful, and inquisitive human being, much older in many ways than his chronological years, highly intelligent beyond the realm of most people his age, more fully developed than a good many athletes who think of themselves as intellectually agile even if infrequently are not. In his mid-twenties, Nadal is unusually reflective, a philosopher at heart, ready to openly examine himself and his actions in depth without resorting to truth stretching. He deliberately leaves out details of his private family life and tells us very little about the breakup of his parents in 2009, but who can really blame him for that? Nadal is entitled to keep matters of deep sensitivity and importance to himself, but he does not shy away from sharing his emotions on a number of other topics, and must be commended for that.

You can read the rest here :

www.tennischannel.com/news/NewsDetails.aspx?newsid=9883

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This picture is from Bacardi's "Drink responsibly" facebook


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