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Rafael Nadal never believed he would be a Grand Slam champion and was “amazed” at each of his 22 major victories, the Spaniard has told Eurosport’s Alize Lim. Nadal expects 2024 to be his final year on the ATP Tour before retirement. Nadal sits second to Novak Djokovic’s record tally of 24 Slam titles. He is set to return at the Brisbane International in January ahead of the Australian Open.
Rafael Nadal never believed he would be a Grand Slam champion and was “amazed” at each of his 22 major victories, the Spaniard has told Eurosport’s Alize Lim.
Nadal expects 2024 to be his final year on the ATP Tour before retirement, capping an incredible career that has been him rival Novak Djokovic and Roger Federer to be considered the greatest male player of all-time.
However, the man from Mallorca was not always destined for greatness as he revealed one of the secrets to his success was a laser focus on the next job at hand.
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When I was a kid, I never said to myself ‘I want to win a Grand Slam, I want to win Grand Slams, I want to be the best’. I was thinking about the tournament of the next week,” Nadal told Lim during a meeting in Vienna.
“And when I won my first Grand Slam, I thought it was going to be the only one I’d win. And then, every time, I won a Grand Slam. I was amazed, I thought, now I can really relax. It’ll probably be my last one. Now I’ve achieved something and that’s already huge.”
The 37-year-old has not played in nearly a year since the 2022 Australian Open and underwent hip surgery in June.
Nadal has tried to play down expectations of what he can achieve before bringing down the curtain on his career, with his comeback .
Lim, though, believes Nadal will have high hopes of adding to his 22 Grand Slams and closing the gap on Djokovic’s record tally of 24.
