Toni Nadal Talks About Rafa’s Serve

Currently sidelined with a right knee injury, Rafael Nadal’s stellar career has been clouded by a few critical points throughout:

What if he remained a right-hander player? How would that have changed his career? Could his results have been better? Would his serve have been a greater force?

Longtime coach, uncle, and mentor Toni Nadal spoke to the media this week in Mallorca about the training his nephew, and the concerns he had for his game growing up. Regaining the range of motion in his right knee, Nadal will begin his perpetration for the upcoming Indian Wells event in California next Monday.

Analyzing Rafa’s serve, Toni Nadal said:

“It’s something that we’ve improved but I think he’d serve better if he [played] right-handed.”

“I always thought he was left-handed because when he was young he showed a lot more strength on his left side, but in time I realized that that’s not the case … I don’t think he’s even sure (which is his dominant hand).”

Rafa has done an excellent job throughout his career of shedding his clay-court label and becoming a more than competent force on every surface. However, the defensive foundation that Nadal was raised under has undoubtedly left him with a hand-full of injuries throughout the years.

“[He] has changed his way of playing, but we can’t forget that he is a clay-court player and it’s not easy to change one’s pattern of play,” reflected Toni Nadal.

“It’s obvious that having had more injuries than normal (over the past eight months) has affected his training and therefore his game, because if you are able to train normally things go much better, like in 2008,” the year Nadal reached No. 1 in the world.

Nadal has 4,100 points to defend from now until the beginning of the French Open. If he continues to be injured, his ranking could drop as low as No. 8 after Roland Garros.

Quotes courtesy of www.tennis-atp.blogspot.com.