Netflix’s docuseries, Rafa, covering the career of tennis great Rafael Nadal, is a first-class production, well-directed by Zach Heinzerling. That wasn’t much of a surprise. What caught me off guard is how often the series is sober, even somber. Make no mistake, Rafa does intend to celebrate the tennis career of one of the most popular and successful players in the sport’s history. But it also takes a deep look at the physical and mental pain and suffering of an elite athlete as he attempts to remain relevant in his chosen profession.
The career of a professional athlete is abnormally brief when compared with other professions. In tennis, to still be competing in tournaments and for major championships at 37 is nearly unheard of (okay, somewhere in the world, Novak Djokovic just laughed). For all the physical gifts a premier athlete may possess, and the monetary compensation that comes with it, relevance is temporary. If you are a doctor, lawyer, banker, accountant, retail worker, waiter, garbage collector, or whatever the profession, whether white collar or blue, there’s a decent chance you can work in that industry for a long time. The average length of a professional tennis player’s career is roughly 7-8 years.
A range that is deceiving, because the entry into tennis is so difficult and expensive that if you make it, you are likely a highly talented junior or college-level player from a wealthy family, or one that made extraordinary sacrifices (see the Williams sisters), and sometimes both. Rafael Nadal is in the “both” category.
The Persistence of Time
Born into a wealthy family in Mallorca, a small island off the coast of Spain, Nadal did not lack for funding. He is a man who was well supported by his parents and driven by his first tennis coach, his uncle Toni. When I say “driven,” I mean it to the fullest extent of the word. Uncle Toni believed in suffering. That there was no other way to be great than to push through pain, exhaustion, and physical fatigue. Many youngsters would, and do, crumble under such tutelage, natural talent be damned. Rafael Nadal was the other kind. He believed that when he suffered, he was giving his all, and he fervently believed in giving his all.
Rafa is constructed in a manner that makes you feel the nature of time. To be more specific, how time runs out so fast. From the ages of 18 to 37, Rafael Nadal was a prominent player—an extraordinary run. The series continually juxtaposes the beginning of Nadal’s prominence in his sport with his attempt to make a comeback on tour in his final year (2024). The method creates an effect that feels like nothing less than the glorious past running down an uncertain present and a limited future.
Nadal’s incredibly physical style of play—all effort all the time—takes its toll on his body, and as his body falters, the mind threatens to follow. Early in the series, you hear American tennis great Andre Agassi say, “His body is writing checks I hope he can cash for a long time.” That Nadal cashed those checks for as long as it did is an extraordinary achievement. Nadal won 22 Grand Slam championships as a pro, second only to Djokovic’s 24. What makes the series all the more fascinating is learning how early Nadal’s physical challenges began.
The Persistence of Pain
At just 19 years of age, Nadal was diagnosed with a rare disease known as Muller-Weiss Syndrome, a degenerative bone condition in his left foot. The disease threatened to end his career, but a specially designed insole saved the next two decades. Even so, Nadal would play all of his twenties and thirties in pain due to his diseased foot. The foot condition and the solution would go on to cause other problems due to his body being misaligned by the insole. On top of the foot issue, Nadal would suffer through knee and hip injuries that would cause him to miss time on the court.
From a very young age, Nadal knew nothing but tennis and family, and as they were intertwined, they were often one and the same. So many of us connect our identity to our jobs. How often have you met a new person and have the conversation start with, “What do you do?” That question always pertains to your work. Are you a grocer? A business magnate? A stevedore? That identification comes from without and within. Some of us embrace that connection to our work, and others of us less so. For Nadal, tennis was, for a long time, not just everything, but the only thing. He was tennis.
Nadal vs. Federer
The contrast in his style of play was never represented better than in his rivalry with the Swiss legend Roger Federer. To watch Federer play tennis was to bask in elegance. There’s a slow-motion shot in the series of Federer’s feet as he ascends into the air to serve, and the way his toes line up with each other as he lifts from the ground is nothing less than balletic. Federer seemed to float around the court. Nadal, well, he rumbled. If one were to think of them as dancers, then Federer was Fred Astaire to Nadal’s Gene Kelly. Astaire was lighter than a feather—seemingly effortless. Whereas Gene Kelly was all firing sinews and athleticism. You could feel the effort connected to the skill. With Astaire, you had no sense of exertion at all. As Madonna once sang, “Fred Astaire, dance on air.”
In one scene, Toni Nadal tells his nephew that Federer is better than him at everything. He tells him, “I could lie to you, but Federer won’t.” Rafa shows how a player with arguably less talent not only improved his skills, found the one single weakness in Federer’s game (returning a high ball on his backhand side) and exploited it, but also discovered the one true advantage he had over the Swiss genius: the willingness to suffer.
Some form of the word “suffer” is mentioned so many times over the series’ four episodes that were you to take a shot every time you heard it, you wouldn’t make it through the second episode before you found yourself under your couch. Of all the extraordinary gifts that Nadal possessed: his speed, his reflexes, his massive top-spin forehand, none were greater than his will and his willingness to take the pain.
The Price of Suffering
The series makes a strong argument that Nadal’s desire to compete was so great that it harmed his health. He won his final French Open title with his left foot anesthetized from pain. Effectively, he won the most grueling tournament in the world with a numb foot. To manage his knee pain, Nadal took so many anti-inflammatories that he likely became addicted, and may live the remainder of his life with intestinal issues due to perforations that were created by an excess of medicinal intake. There is one moment in Rafa where Nadal is shown sliding out of his chair at a post-match press conference because he’s in too much pain to remain seated.
Beyond the physical, Nadal is shown to be ruthlessly compulsive. From the number of times he tugged at his shirt and touched his face before he served (always exactly the same), to the distance and placement of his water bottles from his chair during match breaks, everything had to be just so. Not surprisingly, considering how self and Toni-driven Nadal was, he also suffered greatly from anxiety. It may seem odd to think of such an accomplished champion to be consumed by fear and self-doubt, but Nadal was no more immune than anyone you’ve ever met who struggles with their nerves.
As Nadal’s past catches up to his present, the wear on his body is evident. His tawny, rippling muscles are still there, but less defined. The wrinkle-free face of youth is betrayed by the lines encroaching around his eyes. And his once long, flowing locks have shortened and become wispy. If you live long enough, you will get old. Your body will fail you. It is inevitable. Everything is temporary. Even, and especially, greatness.
Much of episode four is about the athlete coming to terms with an ending that he can only nominally control. Yes, Nadal can decide when to retire, but he can’t control how long he can be competitive. That is not up to him. Nadal reaches the sad, and even soulful, conclusion that he has nothing more to give to the game that has given so much to him, and taken so many pieces of flesh from him.
Throughout the series, I felt not just a sense of nostalgia but also a genuine sadness of my own. I grew up watching tennis from McEnroe and Connors to Agassi and Sampras to Federer, Nadal, and Djokovic. Because I always favored Federer, I never quite appreciated Nadal as much as I should have. That is my loss, and it’s a loss I regret.
In my many years of watching film and television, I can’t think of one portrayal of a great professional athlete’s long battle against his body, mind, and time that showcases the struggle so well. Is Rafa perfect? No. While the series seats some great talking heads, including McEnroe, Andy Roddick, Federer, Djokovic, Toni Nadal, and fellow Spaniard Carlos Moya (whose taking over of Nadal’s coaching duties from Uncle Toni is not without acrimony), I think the series could have used more from his opponents, and from those who could objectively discuss Nadal’s place in tennis history (however evident it might already be).
Controversy?
Most troubling is the almost complete avoidance of anything controversial or negative about Rafael Nadal. There were times in Nadal’s career when, in close, significant matches, he would suddenly need treatment or take long bathroom breaks, likely to clear his head and reset. Whether one would call it gamesmanship, faking, or flat-out cheating, it was a genuinely convenient habit of Nadal’s. I can recall him playing Federer at a Grand Slam, finding himself down a set, and taking an extended bathroom break, causing the normally even-keeled Swiss to complain to the umpire, “He does this all the time.”
While Nadal is almost unfailingly likable and brutally honest with himself, there’s a certain lack of curiosity that often comes with an athlete so focused on their sport. In Nadal’s case, he lived with his parents until he was 31, before moving out and marrying his long-term girlfriend. His world is very insular. While he projects as nothing less than good-hearted, in recent years (and even before), he has shaken some very questionable hands.
Bad Connections
Nadal has become an ambassador for the Saudi Tennis Federation. This decision has raised more than a few eyebrows, considering the closeness of Nadal to Saudi Arabia’s state leadership, a regime well known for human rights abuses. Currently, there are plans for a Rafael Nadal Tennis Academy in Saudi Arabia, again, backed by the oppressive leaders of the Middle Eastern country.
The lack of controversy, major or minor, is not a surprise when one considers the company that bankrolled the series—Skydance Sports, a part of the Ellison family media kingdom, which now includes Paramount, CBS, and after winning a heated bidding war with Netflix, Warner Brothers, HBO, and CNN (the fact that the series is streaming on Netflix is a true case of strange bedfellows). The CEO of Paramount Skydance, David Ellison, is named as an executive producer in the opening credits of each episode. Ellison, the media monopolizer, is an avowed Trump supporter who has made (along with Bari Weiss) a complete right-wing shambles of CBS News, and it’s difficult to imagine he won’t do the same once he gets his hands on CNN.
I was surprised to learn that Nadal and the Ellisons go way back. For roughly twenty years, Nadal would stay at the Ellisons’ home in Coachella, California, when playing in the Indian Wells Open. Unlike the geopolitically savvy Federer, Nadal seems to put on blinders and not consider the price of consorting with such morally and ethically flawed people. Either Nadal is choosing expediency over decency, or he easily succumbs to the charm offensive of those who want to be near his greatness. Maybe it’s both. Regardless, Rafa has no interest in going into Nadal’s dubious business affairs and those who arrange them. Considering the money backing the series, that’s no surprise, but from a critical view, it is a shame.
That said, much of what is in Rafa is choice. The collection and composition of information is delivered with excellence. Tech credits are all top-shelf, and the human factor is ever-present. Nadal is a compelling figure and one of the true greats in the history of tennis. Still, just as he took dangerous risks with his body as a player, it’s impossible to think he isn’t doing the same with his reputation in retirement.
