Mueller\u2013Weiss syndrome<\/a>, a rare degenerative condition that affects bones in the foot.<\/p>\nIt led to a period when it was unclear whether the 19-year-old phenom could continue his dream of becoming a professional tennis player, let alone become one of the greatest to ever do it.<\/p>\n
\u201cProbably that was the toughest part in my tennis career,\u201d Nadal said in an extensive interview with CNN\u2019s Christiane Amanpour in Madrid. \u201cBecause that was just the beginning.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn some ways, you are projecting your future of being a professional tennis player, thinking that you\u2019re gonna have at least seven, eight, 10 years of being on the professional tour, that\u2019s why you have been practicing almost all your life.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd then in one second, it looks like maybe you will not be able to keep doing what you are doing.\u201d<\/p>\n
Nadal reflects extensively on that difficult time in a new four-part docuseries on Netflix, which provides previously unseen insight into the struggles behind his extraordinary success and famous grit.<\/p>\n
Injuries and Nadal\u2019s ability to recover from them is one of the prevailing narratives in the documentary, starting with that major setback at the start of his career.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt 19 years old, you feel everything in a different way. You are very young,\u201d he added. \u201cBut I was very lucky to have very good people next to me.<\/p>\n
\u201cOf course, I always held the hope that things were gonna move forward and I would be able to keep playing, but the news for a couple of months hadn\u2019t been positive.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mental health challenges<\/p>\n
Ultimately, though, Nadal and his medical team found a solution that worked, a new cutting-edge insole that moved his foot almost 0.276 inches (7 mm) inside his sneaker. Nike then went away and created a new shoe, custom-designed just for his foot.<\/p>\n
While it was a solution that worked, it certainly wasn\u2019t the end of his injury problems. The foot issue resurfaced multiple times, notably in the seasons leading up to his retirement in 2024.<\/p>\n
There were also several wrist and knee problems which contributed to the Spaniard missing a total of 18 grand slams during his career \u2013 a number which makes his 22 major titles look even more impressive.<\/p>\n
But while there was undoubted success through adversity \u2013 he fought through pain and found solutions to remain competitive \u2013 Nadal wasn\u2019t as bulletproof as he seemed from the outside.<\/p>\n
In his interview with CNN, the 39-year-old spoke about how he struggled with the mental pressure and anxiety of battling injuries and playing elite sport. It got to a point where he couldn\u2019t leave the house without having a bottle of water to hold in his hand.<\/p>\n
\u201cProbably because I went through a lot of injuries, a lot of pressure, and arrived in a moment where, in some way, you are not able to handle all of this \u2013 even if in my mind I was able to handle all of this,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut it arrived at a point where your mind fails, and that\u2019s what happened. I always thought that I needed to fix things for myself, in terms of mental strength. But when I cannot go out on the street without a bottle of water in my hand, that\u2019s a big thing. So I needed to find help and that\u2019s what I did.\u201d<\/p>\n
Nadal initially saw a psychologist, but didn\u2019t feel much benefit. He then visited a psychiatrist around 2015, with his performances on the court suffering.<\/p>\n
\u201cAfter that, I started with some medication for a while and I was able to start feeling improvements after a couple of months. That was for around a year and then, of course, I recovered,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
Alcaraz and Ibiza<\/p>\n
Nadal was and is not alone in feeling the weight of pressure in professional tennis. The grueling schedule sees players traveling away from home for around 11 months every year, with tournaments coming thick and fast.<\/p>\n
It naturally leads to burnout both mentally and physically, with managing injuries and workload now a vital aspect of the tour.<\/p>\n
Carlos Alcaraz<\/a> is said to be the heir to Nadal\u2019s thrown, with the 23-year-old cementing himself as a dominant force in the game, alongside rival Jannik Sinner. As the pair take the sport to yet another new level, Alcaraz, like Nadal, has struggled with injuries.<\/p>\nThe seven-time grand slam winner has withdrawn from both the French Open and Wimbledon this year as he recovers from a wrist injury, a problem Nadal says every athlete will face in their career.<\/p>\n
But Nadal was quick to defend Alcaraz\u2019s life away from the court after the young Spaniard had been open about the need he has for mid-season breaks, notably trips to Ibiza that he uses to blow off steam and reset his mind.<\/p>\n
And while that admission raised a few eyebrows in the sport, it\u2019s something Nadal knows about all too well.<\/p>\n
\u201cI went to Ibiza every single year with my friends,\u201d Nadal said. \u201cEveryone needs to find their own space.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy life was much more than tennis, but I didn\u2019t want to project that to the world. I didn\u2019t find it interesting for the world that I was going to Ibiza. (Alcaraz) decided to make that public. I respect that. It seems like it\u2019s working very well for him too.\u201d<\/p>\n
The-CNN-Wire
\u2122 & \u00a9 2026 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Christiane Amanpour, Ben Church, Alicia Lloyd, CNN (CNN) \u2014 It\u2019s undeniable that Rafael Nadal enjoyed one of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":684471,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[442],"tags":[49,48,82,593],"class_list":["post-684470","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-sports","tag-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/684470","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=684470"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/684470\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/684471"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=684470"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=684470"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=684470"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}