ROME (AP) — It turns out that winning 22 Grand Slam titles and a record 14 French Open trophies doesn’t make putting the kids to bed any easier.
Rafael Nadal made that clear when he showed up slightly after the appointed time near 9 p.m. on a Monday night for a video interview from his home in Mallorca to promote his upcoming exhibition in Las Vegas.
Looking slightly frazzled, the retired tennis standout quickly apologized for being eight minutes late — because he was busy tucking in his two sons.
“Sorry,” Nadal said to open an interview with The Associated Press. “That’s the world of being a dad.”
While he no longer plays professional tennis, Nadal still travels the world representing his business interests, promoting his foundation and tennis academy and picking up awards.
When he’s not traveling, family comes first.
“It’s strange to say, but not much golf, not much fishing,” he said of what he does on a typical day at home. “I have two small kids. I have work to do.
“When I’m at home, normally I try to bring my kids to the school at 8:30 in the morning," Nadal said, noting that the school is at the Rafa Nadal Academy on his home island of Mallorca, Spain. “Then I normally try to go to the gym and stay in the office during the whole morning. Try to pick up the kids at 3:30 and then try to spend the afternoon with them.
“That’s my day normally, a normal day at home. I don’t have that many because I am traveling, I am doing stuff, I have events. But most of the days when I am at home and nothing to do, I do that.”
Nadal — who turned 40 in June — said he was playing “almost zero” tennis before he picked up his racket for an exhibition a month ago with Andy Murray and others to mark the 10-year anniversary of his academy.
Next up is “The MGM Slam presented by Capital One” at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas on Feb. 28 — which will mark Nadal’s first time playing in the U.S. since retiring two years ago.
Nadal faced Carlos Alcaraz in the Vegas exhibition in 2024 during his final year on tour.
Additional players and the format for the 2027 event will be announced in the coming weeks. It’s slated for just before the ATP 1000 event in Indian Wells, California.
Last year, eight players competed in a tiebreaker format.
Might the next step be an exhibition with his former rival Roger Federer?
Federer showed that he’s still sharp during an exhibition at this year’s U.S. Open.
“I am open (to it) and I had long conversations with Roger,” Nadal said. “Let’s see what’s going on in the future; if something happens or not. But we are in almost weekly contact together. We talk very often and if at some point we find the right reason and the right place to do something, you will know, guys. But I don’t know yet.”
During their careers, Nadal won 24 of his 40 matches with Federer.
So beyond discussing possible exhibitions, when they chat do Nadal and Federer compare themselves to the current crop of tennis stars like Alcaraz, Jannik Sinner and Alexander Zverev?
“Yeah, we think that we were much, much better. Yeah,” Nadal said jokingly with a big laugh before responding seriously: “No, we talk about different stuff. … We talk about golf. We talk about sports. We share thoughts. I mean, normal relationship.”
Is there also a “Big Three” chat that includes Novak Djokovic?
“We don’t have a chat at all,” Nadal said. “Novak is still in competition.”
Nadal acknowledged that he was “not in the mood” to commit to the Vegas exhibition when it was first proposed.
“But then, in some way, that’s an obligation for me to start practicing again, to start doing my things,” he said. “I’m still hitting the ball quite well, to be honest. The movement is another story.”
Nadal had surgery to treat pain and regain mobility in his right hand nearly a year ago and said that he was “not able to do much” for four months. He was also bothered by chronic pain in his left foot, hip issues and many other physical ailments during his storied career.
“I need to go step-by-step,” he said about getting back into shape. “Because if I want to avoid injuries … the old body requires time and patience.”
When Serena Williams came back to the pro game earlier this year, bringing her two daughters along to see her play was part of the motivation.
For Nadal, it’s different.
“Now I just do it for myself,” he said when asked if playing the exhibition was so his sons could see him in action. “Almost everything I do, I do it for them. But this, I do it just because I want to enjoy the preparation and then the feeling of playing again tennis in front of a good crowd.”
Nadal’s Netflix documentary “Rafa,” released this year, provided a fresh glimpse into the immense pain that the Spaniard played through during his career.
And now with Alcaraz and Sinner both having missed large portions of this year due to injury, the game’s physical toll has come under the spotlight.
Nadal was asked if there were times during his career when he wished there were fewer matches on hard courts and more tournaments on clay and grass.
“It was difficult for me to fight for that when I was on the tour,” Nadal said, noting that people would have thought he was just trying to take advantage of his dominance on clay, “or even grass, that I think was my second-best surface.
“But now I can say: I don’t see a lot of professional sports playing on that kind of surfaces. That’s the truth. In tennis, we’re playing most of the time in a very, let’s say, aggressive surface for the body and for the joints. And then we pay the price.”
Nadal renewed his call to follow golf and move to a rolling ranking system based on two years of results rather than one year as is currently used in tennis.
A two-year system, Nadal said, would “give the players a little bit more freedom to make better decisions and at the same time, when you get injured, you have more time to recover” without seeing your ranking drop rapidly.
He also echoed many current players by saying that extending Master 1000s tournaments to two weeks was “a mistake.”
While Nadal remains busy running his academy — which employs up to 700 workers at a time — and other business interests, might he eventually return to the circuit as a “super coach” like Murray has with Djokovic and Jack Draper?
His academy this year celebrated having six players — led by No. 17 Alex Eala on the women's side and No. 23 Casper Ruud, who Nadal beat for his final Grand Slam title in the 2022 French Open final — in the top 100 of the rankings.
“Never say never,” Nadal said. “But not now.
“I have two small kids and I cannot commit to stay full time with a player,” he added. “Today, I am not the coach that I (would) pick up if I was a professional tennis player.”
Because then he wouldn't be there for bedtime.
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