By Chris Oddo | @TheFanChild | Friday October 11, 2024
You can tell a lot about a tennis player just by listening to them speak about other players. Today in Wuhan, we learned a bit more about American Coco Gauff. She gave reporters her thoughts on Rafael Nadal’s retirement, and by doing so, revealed more about what she values most in other people.
“He is my favorite person to watch practice, honestly,” Gauff said of the 22-time major champion. “The intensity that he brought on the practice court and obviously on the match court is something that I felt like watching is unmatched.”
It’s interesting that Gauff highlights Nadal’s practice sessions, rather than his matches. Nadal was always a player that conducted in his business in the most professional manner, and Gauff has taken notice of the Spaniard’s legendary penchant for never taking a point off – whether on the practice court or the match court.
She says she’s having a hard time – like so many of us – accepting that Nadal’s career will be officially over in November. “Watching [Nadal’s retirement] video, [I was] a bit emotional because Rafa is all I've known growing up. Pretty sure he's won Roland Garros for like the majority of my life.
“I guess it's something that's unfortunate. It's going to happen to everybody one day. Hopefully it was completely on his terms. I know maybe this year he didn't have as many injury-free moments as he wanted to.”
Gauff highlighted the things that Nadal does off the court as she paid tribute to the King of Clay for the way he treated others.
“Overall, the career he had is something that players and people dream of," she said. "Off the court he was always speaking to me, always saying congratulations to me whenever I did well. It's something that is very rare when you come across top players, especially when they're not on the women's side, maybe on the men's side. I don't know, I just felt things he would do, he went out of his way.”
Gauff will never forget the time that Nadal congratulated her after she had reached her maiden Roland-Garros final in 2022. She ways it was a moment that will always stick with her, as will the time that she trade Olympic pins with the legend in Paris this summer.
“I remember at one point he said congratulations to me the year I went to the finals of the French Open,” she said. “I kind of did a double take because I couldn't believe he was speaking to me.”
Gauff says that she’ll be telling the story of trading with Nadal at the Olympics for many years to come. Her anecdote is another window into Nadal’s humanity. Though an icon and a global celebrity, the Spaniard never saw himself as something special, and always made time to share with people around him.
Whether it be Gauff, a fan, or the men and women that work behind the scenes as volunteers at the tournaments he played, he treated them all with dignity.
“We traded pins at the Olympics, which is the one thing I wanted to do,” she said. “He was super nice with that. We were both waiting on the shuttle. It was the last shuttle of the day, like 11 p.m. I asked him if I could have one of his pins. He gave me one. Carlos [Moya] was there, too, but Carlos didn't have any pins. I only took the picture with Rafa there. I was like, ‘Carlos, you can't be in it because you didn't give me a pin.’
“Yeah, just something like that I'll remember. And something I'll definitely tell my kids because it meant a lot to me.”