But Nadal faced down plenty of challenges, including 4:30 a.m. bedtimes after late-finishing matches. It has been quite an end to 2019 with his fourth United States Open title in September, his wedding in October and now this.
“It’s always difficult to speak about Rafa,” López said. “To be honest, there are things that you cannot describe with words, because the things that he was able to produce yesterday in the doubles and today against Denis and during his whole career, they’re things that only people like Rafa are able to do.”
Nadal is now 29-1 in singles in the Davis Cup and has not lost a singles match in the competition in more than 15 years. His only defeat came in his debut against Jiri Novak of the Czech Republic in the first round in 2004. But Nadal went on to help lead the Spanish to victory later that year against the United States, defeating Andy Roddick on clay in Seville, Spain, in the 2004 final.
It was one of the early signs of the great career ahead of him, and his long-running success and popularity in Spain are a big reason the Spanish investment firm Kosmos and its president, Gerard Piqué, best known as a soccer star, were interested in acquiring the rights to the Davis Cup and bringing the first edition to Madrid.
There were issues with scheduling and technology and with a lack of spectators for matches not involving Nadal and Spain. In the end, only five of the year-end top 10 took part, with Nadal’s longtime rival Roger Federer having organized a Latin American exhibition tour with the young German star Alexander Zverev during the same week.
Piqué said on Sunday that changes would be made, but the event is still set to return to Madrid with 18 teams in 2020.
Spain, as defending champion, is guaranteed to be one of them, and it is hard to imagine that Nadal will have stopped running, hustling and winning by then.
