By Richard Pagliaro | Wednesday, June 21, 2023

 

"On clay, you need to generate a different type of acceleration, a different kind of force to create the power," Coach Alex Praderas told Tennis Now.

Photo credits: Palladium Hotel Group/Rafa Nadal Tennis Centre

Terre Battue doesn't talk, but the Rafa Nadal Tennis Centre red clay courts carry a clear message.

Commitment, court coverage and consistency are all essential elements when you step into the King of Clay's world.

Tennis Now joined a group of about 10 media members from North America to participate in group clinics on the eight red clay courts at the Rafa Nadal Tennis Centre in Costa Mujeres, Mexico last week. Four of the courts are covered, which was vital for our survival given the sticky 90-degree temperatures and physicality of the clinics.

Working with head coach Alex Praderas and coach Alejandro Vera Durán, our group repeated some of the exact same drills 14-time Roland Garros champion Rafael Nadal uses in his clay-court preparation.

The experience was exhilarating, sometimes exhausting, like in our final drill when Coach Alex sped up the pace in our game against him, and a total blast coming days after Roland Garros climaxed and red clay fervor was running high.

This is high-performance tennis training in a tropical paradise on the grounds of two five-star resorts—the TRS Coral Hotel, which is for adults only, and Grand Palladium Resort & Spa, catering to families. We first visited before the coronavirus crisis began ravaging North America back in March of 2020 and were impressed by the evolution of the Rafa Nadal Tennis Centre in our return last week.

The Costa Mujeres Centre complements the Rafa Nadal Academy, which opened its doors in May 2016 in Rafa's native Mallorca. Rafa and Uncle Toni traveled to Cancun to officially inaugurate the Centre in February of 2019 and stock the Rafa Nadal Museum experience on the second floor.

It features an exhibit of the king of clay’s Grand Slam and Davis Cup trophies, the racquets he used winning some of those titles and the clothes and shoes Rafa wore in those title runs as well as items from players ranging from Roger Federer to Madison Keys to Maria Sharapova.



In a cool personal touch, Rafa himself recorded a two-minute welcome message for our entire group that coach Alex plays for us on the large video screen inside the museum.

In the video, Rafa greeted our group, shared some of his personal favorite things aboutt he resort, including the food, beach and red clay courts, and encouraged our group to "have fun" experiencing it all.

The resort is a sports lover’s playground with spectacular sunsets over an inviting beach, fine dining, Mexico’s famed tequila and mescal offerings—and all the tennis you can handle. If you’re looking to decompress from the vise-grip of daily stress and immerse yourself in tennis and relaxation, turn off your troubles and plug into bliss here.

The Rafa Nadal Tennis Centre coaches share a common mission statement: Maximize players' strengths, minimize their weaknesses and improve technique and physical fitness.



The Centre offers a variety of tennis program packages: 3 hours of tennis (in 3 days), 4 hours of tennis (in 4 days), 5 hours of tennis (in 5 days) and 6 hours of tennis (in 6 days). The focus is on the singles game, though if you come with a group you can take doubles' clinics.

The Centre also offers private lessons and provides the balls and racquets—because it's the Rafa Nadal Tennis Centre of course it exclusively offers Babolat racquets, the king of clay's chose brand—meaning you can show up in shorts and sneakers and start playing immediately. Guests of the all-inclusive Grand Palladium Resort & Spa and the TRS Coral Hotel receive an hour of free court time with reservations. Clinics require additional fees, which vary based on the length of the program you select.

The drills, which are primarily predicated on coaches hand-feeding or hitting balls to players, are intense, intimate and fun. All the coaches are bilingual, show great attention to detail and provide plenty of positive reinforcement.

For instance, the initial four-ball drill has two players standing next to each other behind the center stripe on the baseline. Both move laterally to hit a drive, shuffle back to the center then repeat before sprinting around the net to retrieve the balls and deposit back in the coach’s basket and return to the line to repeat the drill again and again.

Midway through the second drill, your legs are like licorice and your lungs go rogue. The physicality of the drills are designed to strengthen your stamina for match play.

The Nadal methodology places a premium on executing each aspect of stroke fully and quickly recovering to the center of the court. Reflecting on our two days of sweaty, intense and fun-filled training, you realize the coaches are trying to help you become comfortable in uncomfortable situations on court.

It's not about linear movement, hitting one shot and moving forward as many hard-court doubles players of a certain age become accustomed to, it's more of developing movement as a flowing force all over the court like the waves crashing across the nearby beach.



On my prior visit to the Centre back in March of 2020, Toni Nadal helped conduct the clinics and led a couple of Q&A sessions. At one point, Toni Nadal was asked to assess the skill set that makes Rafa Nadal such a unique champion.

In response, two elements Uncle Toni Nadal cited were Rafa's commitment to striking every single ball as well as he can and his nephew's ability to conjure magical drives on the run bending topspin bolts into obscure corners of the court.

"In my opinion, Rafael is the best in the world hitting good shots from bad positions on the court," Toni Nadal said.

Of course none of us mortals (read: hackers) will ever deliver dazzle on the run like Rafa, but doing these drills on the red clay you're engaged by the thrill of the chase and the joy of digging in the dirt.

The beauty of the Academy is the coaches are excellent in not only strengthening technique, but providing individualized instruction to every player. The ratio of players to coach in clinics is 4 to 1 which promotes interaction.

We caught up with head pro Alex Praderas for this interview after he put our enthusiastic four-player group, featuring standouts Ramon, Raquel and Tim, through a sweaty and fun 90-minute clinic last week. Alex Praderas, who grew up in Mallorca occasionally facing the young Rafa in juniors, has coached for 20 years.

Initially, he started coaching at the Rafa Nadal Academy in Mallorca, which is designed for pros, high-performance players and elite juniors aspiring to college scholarships. Praderas came to the Rafa Nadal Tennis Centre in Costa Mujeres, Mexico in 2019. Here, he coaches recreational players of all skill levels in the Nadal methodology.



In this Q&A, Coach Alex discusses the Nadal methodology, the challenge for hard-court players transitioning tored clay and the future for the Rafa Nadal Tennis Centre.

Next week, we'll post a report reviewing our entire five-day stay at the TRS Coral Hotel and Rafa Nadal Tennis Centre.

TN: So did you know Rafa growing up? If so what was that like?

Alex Praderas: Yes, I am two-and-a-half years older than Rafa. We did get to compete there. We were not always great friends but we know each other because Mallorca is a small place. So everyone kind of knows everyone. I am born and raised in Mallorca. It's not the reason why I'm here. I don't have that kind of relationship with Rafa. But everybody in the tennis world in Mallorca knows everybody.

TN: Before our lesson today, you spoke about the Rafa Nadal methodology. Also, you showed us the video from Rafa to our group talking about the methodology at the Nadal Academy. What are the essential elements of the Nadal methodology?

Alex Praderas: Tennis is a pretty abstract sport in that you cannot say one way is the exact method for every person, every player. There are many different ways of hitting the ball. In our methodology, we believe in keeping your strengths as sharp and as strong as possible and keeping your weaknesses as weak as possible. We rely a lot on the coach-player drills feeding different balls in different areas, different depths, on the court because they translate to the real game better.

We integrate a real importance to the intensity of the session. The size of our groups--four players to one coach--contributes to that intensity. So we will have two players doing drills and two players picking up balls and then rotate quickly. That maintains the intensity of the session and the rhythm of the session.

The feedback from the players is very important. We take constant feedback from players. We have to be very precise and well-measured in our coaching and how we conduct these sessions. There's constant feedback on the sessions and what are our expectations for our players.

On drills, we try to provide a progression, to make it gradually more challenging and ultimately mimic matches.

Tennis is difficult. So many things can happen during the course of a point and you can never replicate everything that can possibly happen. But there are ways of training that can prepare you for match conditions.

For example, you take a lesson, the coach feeds the ball to you and you know where it's coming before it lands. Then you go play a match and you can't hit more than three balls back in a row.

Here, we're aiming to make you more focused on control and precision, to make you more ready, to be receptive to the bounce of the ball can take you anywhere.

TN: What are the qualities you aim to emphasize here?

Alex Praderas: It's more about precision than power. Power is a secondary factor here.

If you can hit faster, it's better. But it's about getting the ball in consistently. Most people think if you just keep hitting faster eventually it will go in on its own, but it's not that way.

We need to work on consistency and moving properly between shots to set up for the next shot. The drills we do, there's a lot of movement required.

We prioritize the movement in our drills. Obviously, there's other factors as well: the player's age, skills, fitness level. We can be more specific to each players' needs with the hand feeding and we do racquet feeding as well. Game situations, points, tactical situations are among the main, key points of our teaching here.

Rather than simply feeding balls, which can lead to players hitting hundreds of shots with no real purpose or progression, we actively involve our coaches in the drills. The goal is to get you focusing on controlling the ball, sometimes aiming right at the coach as you saw today.

And also receiving a variety of different ball types which vary in height and speed and simulate a real rally. That's why you see us sometimes bouncing the feed ball to you. That is to try to replicate the different spins you get on clay and also we can feed the dead ball, the no-pace ball, which can be tricky for some coming from hard courts.

We also believe in working with controlled rallies which simulate real match situations, to use all of the different skills required for a complete game. This type of training allow us coaches to focus more on giving the best feedback and tips specific to your game rather than just being mere ball machines and motivators. 



TN: I'm a recreational player coming from the U.S. who plays mainly on hard court. What are some of the challenges someone like me faces transitioning to red clay here?

Alex Praderas: Obviously, different surfaces have different demands and requirements.

Ninety-nine percent of the people who come here don't train regularly on red clay. There is always an adjustment, but it's the same sport.

The ball is slower here. It's actually harder for people to go from a faster surface to a slower surface.

The reality is the speed of the ball will help you in terms of making you feel like your shot is faster and better.

On a faster surface, you take advantage of that speed, you hit the ball without even that much of a swing and the ball goes. You need a good contact point.

On a clay court, the ball dies a bit more, it also kicks up a bit more on clay, arches a bit higher. So for you to produce that same fast ball as you did on hard court now, you're seeing the ball doesn't feel like it's moving as much. On clay, you need to generate a different kind of acceleration, a different kind of force to create the power. On clay, you need to rely on yourself, not the ball so much.

So your technique needs to be a bit better, you need to rely on your legs more, you need to rely on your timing and your loading much more. It makes it harder because it requires you to do more things. You have more time for it on clay, but the surface requires more of you, too.

A challenge some North American players may have is many are doubles players so some have a system of hitting one ball and going forward to the net. Here, there might be a ball that forces you back, that you have to defend. So what we trying to reinforce is the court awareness. We do drills where you play against the coach and the first ball might be short,it could be deep, it could be an angle. So sometimes, it's people anticipating and running forward too early. So there is an adaptation time.

It also depends on your level of play. Some higher-level players can adapt faster and some players sometimes don't feel they are playing better even when they are because the surface is a bit more difficult. It's an experience. Watching people make that adjustment, engage and use their legs more and really enjoy it is a lot of fun.

It's a softer surface so it's gentler on your knees, your hips, your back, your feet. I grew up on clay, I love clay and I feel great on clay. I'm more of an attacking player so my game might be better on hard court. Though hard courts are good, at a certain age they can be hard on the body.

So regardless of your age or skill level, it is a great experience to come here and play and train on the red clay. It's great for your body and it gives your mind a different perspective on the sport, too.

Because it's a slower surface, we have a little more time technique, to teach open stance and closed stance, moving forward and moving back to recover and playing offense and defense. So those are things, if you're playing exclusively on hard court in the States, you might not cover in depth and detail as much as we can here.

And if you look at the way the sport is played today, Rafa and Medvedev they return from near the back fence, so our aim is to coach offense and defense and get you comfortable playing from different parts of the court.

These are great clay courts. And if you come and stay at the resort, the court-time is included, we have the racquets and the balls here for you at the center so you show up, play tennis on some beautiful red clay courts and hopefully have a wonderful experience playing and improving your game.



TN: What is the most popular program you run here at the Rafa Nadal Tennis Centre?

Alex Praderas: Here we have a few options. We have clinics for adults all year round based on the singles game, which is what we did today.

We do have one specific program for doubles. It's based on doubles play, volleying, tactics, communication, covering the line and all those things. Those are recurring programs for a group. So if you have a doubles group that wants to come and focus on doubles we can do that.

The singles clinic you did today, that's an open group. So if you're visiting the resort with your family or alone you can come and take the open group clinic. We will try to put you in a group with players of similar skill levels and if there is no one at your level we can work with a coach.

The open group clinics are three days and we cycle through programs. So we do groundstrokes, offense and defense, the net game, tactics, technique, the drills and match-play situations. We normally recommend that people try to do three days because we can touch on the totality of the game over the three days.

With groundstrokes, we incorporate the movement into the drills. So you're working backhand and forehand and moving side-to-side while we're drilling and it's groundstrokes from the back of the court and also attacking the mid-court balls.

In offense and defense, we're teaching you how to defend in a difficult situation, how to attack in a favorable situation and how to transition. We teach you how to deal with those kind of balls, which can be tougher on clay because of the unpredictability, at times, of the bounce.

With the net game, we're teaching positioning at net, how to finish at net, how to transition to net. We do points too.

TN: The last time I was here right before the pandemic, Toni Nadal was here and he and you taught a fantastic clinic. Does Rafa's family come back at all?

Alex Praderas: Toni hasn't been back since that trip that was right before the pandemic really hit. Rafa's family does come and visit.

They come every year. Rafa's dad, Sebastian, was here in February, I believe. Rafa's sister was here in December, I believe.

They come for business, to see the site and check on everything. Obviously, Rafa has been very busy with his career so he has not been here recently. But we hope in the coming years, after his playing days, Rafa will be back to visit. We love seeing Rafa here.

We may have another Toni Nadal camp in the future. He wants to come back and do another one, which is very exciting, to get Toni back here again.



TN: Are there any programs or future plans in the works you can share with us?

Alex Praderas: In terms of other projects we have for the future, the hotel is growing. The hotel has a second phase that's going to be built this year. We cannot really grow in terms of courts. We can cover more courts in the future. During the pandemic, it slowed things because people couldn't travel. Now, we are back on track.

We are very busy. This is our busiest year and we're getting busier and busier, which is great. The Rafa Nadal Tennis Centre is growing, we have activities going on all year around.

In September, we host the ITF General Conference. It doesn't affect the Centre, it's held at the hotel, but it's great exposure for the Centre as well. We have a senior tournament that we host. There's always questions can we host a Challenger tournament here because of the facility size and structure. But I'm not sure we're really interested in doing a Challenger. There's not a lot of money, it's a separate business and we're focused on our teaching and clinics.

At the moment, we want to keep solidifying our programs here.

As you see, the courts are amazing, the hotel is very beautiful and what we provide is a very unique experience for players to come and enjoy. Honestly, I don't travel very much, but I don't know of many places that offer this kind of red-clay experience in this kind of quality hotel resort.

Obviously, there are great places around the world you can go to play on red clay. The totality of what we offer and this environment makes this place very special.