ence. Most players would laugh and ogle her, while Nadal would be staring at the ground. This is because he’s so compulsively into his routines when he’s not playing points that acknowledging anything else would disrupt his subliminal patterns. I feel that this is one of the major reasons that he never gets into any type of argument with a chair umpire. This is simply because yelling at a chair umpire in the middle of play would take him out of all his routines and fluster him tremendously. Now, a lot of tennis players have strange little quirks that they do in between points. Andy Roddick paces quickly back and forth as if he’s waiting for a urinal to open up in a men’s room. Maria Sharapova stands with her back to her opponent with her head down as if I just approached her at a bar and was trying to start a conversation with her. These are two examples of relatively small doses of OCD that these players have developed over their lifetime of playing tennis matches. All players have their own certain routines, but Nadal is dif-
ferent. He has about 10 different things that he does that puts all others to shame. First off … when Nadal gets on the court, he sits down, and then takes his sweet time arranging and setting up camp at his changeover chair. He always makes sure that when it is time for the coin flip, that the chair umpire and his opponent are always waiting for him at the net as he sits there futzing around with his power gel and tow-
“The bottom line is that Rafael Nadal is a special talent that is, at times, almost superhuman, but he’s not perfect.” els. He never waits for his opponent, they always wait for him. Next, and most importantly to him, is that he always sets up two water bottles in between his feet when he sits down at a changeover. Those water bottles stay per-
fectly positioned next to each other and they always have equal amounts of water in each bottle. There’s even a video on YouTube of a ballboy moving one of the bottles aside and then Nadal quickly reprimanding him not to touch them, then rearranging it back to the way he needs them to be. Now when play starts, Nadal has a few more patterns that needs to be done in between points. He infamously picks at the back of his shorts just like we all do when we think nobody else is around. He always fixes and adjusts the level of his socks. Much like the water bottles, they too have to be at the same level on his calf. Before he starts each point, he makes sure the hair that sticks out from underneath his headband is tucked behind his ears. With all of this stuff to do, it has helped Nadal always stay focused and become as mentally strong as he can be. So if you were a top 75 player and I was coaching you to play him, I would make sure that you try to continued on page 12
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LITennisMag.com • November/December 2010 • Long Island Tennis Magazine
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