Rafael Nadal, Novak Djokovic and Roger Federer or the Big 3 have been dominating the tennis sport more than any other player ever has.
However, among these three Rafael Nadal has a lot of the times been the better player due to his longevity and his consistency in the sport irrespective of his increasing age or persistent injury woes.
This statement can be proved by the fact that the last two Grand Slam titles have been won by Rafael Nadal even though he clearly was not the favourite. His recent win in the French Open came in light of recent chronic leg injury issues.
However, he defied all the woes in order to get his trophy. A lot of people have been engaging in the GOAT debate between Novak Djokovic and Rafael Nadal. But Rafael Nadal has distanced himself from all these talks.
When he was asked about retiring with 2 more grand slam titles to his name, he was quick to dismiss this claim by stating in an interview that,
“It’s very simple to understand for me. I don’t know, sometimes for you (the media) it’s a little bit different,”
“It’s not about being the best of the history, it’s not about the records, it’s about I like what I do, I like to play tennis and I like the competition.
“We achieved our dreams — me, Roger, Novak. We achieved things that probably we never expected.”
Novak Djokovic focused on winning trophies and making records
Rafael Nadal has made it pretty clear that he is not a trophy hungry maniac but instead a tennis player who wants to keep going for the passion of the game.
He does not keep going with the goal of winning more titles, but rather the goal to give himself a chance to keep doing what he likes to do.
Nadal’s stance is very different from that of Novak Djokovic. Novak has clearly been very vocal about trophies and records and his total time spent as the World No 1, a ranking which has been held by him longer than any other player in the sport.
Nadal who spoke about this said that he is aware of how Djokovic cares about trophies and records, but that is not how he likes to approach his tennis career.