I read this on the 7:32 train and read it twice. John McEnroe, who smashed more than one racket when he played, says he does not understand Rafael Nadal, because Nadal never broke a single one in his whole career. “What is wrong with him?” he said on the Spanish radio show El Larguero. He even offered: “maybe he’s a robot”.
Silly question, but I thought it was the other way round. A racket is the tool. You don’t break your tool. In my kot (student digs), the one who breaks the frying pan is the one people look at oddly, not the others.
So I made a table in my notebook, using only what McEnroe says. Roger Federer: one racket broken. Carlos Alcaraz: one racket broken. Rafael Nadal: zero. Jannik Sinner: question mark, McEnroe thinks “maybe not”. McEnroe himself: more than one.
If I follow the logic to the end, being human in tennis starts at one racket. Federer and Alcaraz are therefore human by a whisker, with the bare minimum. Nadal is a robot. Sinner may be turning into a robot, since “maybe he’s following in their footsteps”. And McEnroe, with more than one, is the most human of all. So the most human player on the table is the one who destroys the most equipment.
I asked the newsroom whether there is an official register of broken rackets. I checked, and actually nobody knows.
A racket costs a set of strings and a Sunday. Nadal just did the sums.
McEnroe concludes that “it’s very difficult”. Not breaking anything over a whole career, or understanding someone who didn’t? He doesn’t say. Anyway, I still have a lot to learn.
It’s true, we checked: We Love Tennis.
