Rafa versus Nadal

Rafa Nadal, this Sunday after winning Roland Garros. Adam Pretty (Getty Images)

I think Rafa Nadal's phrase was something like: "I'll have to talk to myself to know what I'm doing."

The question was referred to that already chronic injury that after many years hidden or disguised has turned all of us Spaniards interested in this sport into specialists in the foot, its bones and its treatments.

That injury, the illness of Müller-Weiss, who has the name of a German scorer and seems to come with an unpayable termination clause.

When I watched the warm-up prior to the final, there in the locker room tunnel and with Casper Ruud at his side, I thought that Nadal activated the pressure from before the match began and that he used those minutes, which I imagine eternal before jumping onto the court , to gain a few tenths of a psychological advantage that can be decisive in this type of endgame.

You already know about the finals and the little details.

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But confirming that there are as many visions as there are possibilities, we now know that he was testing his anesthetized foot, his sensations and his body's response to such a unique situation.

Come on, if Ruud gets to feel that way —perhaps he did and we don't know, that these Norwegians are very discreet?—, he would be facing one of those positive lights that all of us who have ever been in that type look for of places, in those kinds of situations.

Where we all saw Nadal's strength, a shadow of doubt, a shadow of weakness, a small detail that the Norwegian could pull to always remain in the final could be guessed.

As everything has been written about the game, I fly over it to land in the press room afterward and stay with that reflection with which my text began and that caught my attention in a powerful way.

I explain.

The life of an athlete, like yours, come on, runs in a permanent internal conversation between that angel who tells you that everything is possible, that everything is going to be fine, that you have to keep going because the future is going to be wonderful, and that devil that eats us up inside reminding us that the percentage of those who arrive is minimal, that the rival is very good, that your physique goes as far as it goes and nothing else, that everything depends on your body being able to withstand the pain of that sprain, that blow, that little injury that just won't go away.

Conversations that Rafa Nadal is already used to managing, responding to,

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But it would seem that "I have to talk to myself" goes beyond those angel-devil conversations to become, perhaps and just perhaps, a simple and serious talk, as always when the Majorcan tennis player speaks to us, between Rafa and Nadal.

Between the present and what it can alter the future.

Between what can and should be done.

Or what should be done.

I still remember when after their first Roland Garros, Rafa and his uncle Toni told me that everything had already been done for them, that they were already satisfied and that registering their name in the Paris tournament already justified a whole career.

It has been proven that they began to like the topic and 22 majors later, more Davis Cups and more other tournaments, I would say that in that personal and intimate Rafa versus Nadal match, Rafael Nadal has earned the right to give himself the best answer and, in this way, for all his family.

And by extension, for all of us.

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