Long live King Rafa

Vamos. Let’s go. Only Rafael Nadal is not going to go on forever. Many tennis lovers will weep salt tears when Roger Federer walks on court for the final time. My wife is observing a period of mourning after the retirement of Andy Murray and Serbs will wear black with the passing of Novak Djokovic. But when Rafa Nadal decides there are no more countries for him to conquer, I will look upon tennis with overwhelming nostalgia.

If Federer has been the supreme classicist, with the orthodox one-handed backhand, and that graceful movement, then Nadal has been the revolutionary. And when his fans cry, ‘‘Viva la revolucion’’ they talk not just of peaceful resistance, but about the wild revolutions Rafa puts on the ball.

That topspin forehand is still one of the most beautiful, mindblowing, inconceivable shots that you will see. When Rafa was in his prime, there was almost a treble loop on the follow through, such was the whip lash spin through the ball. The shot would bend and bounce in ways that even Roger could not cope with, particularly on his backhand side. Even now Rafa’s monumental forehand still pays tricks with his opponents.

At the 2009 Australian Open, after losing to Rafa in the final. Federer wept because he realised that the Spaniard was the finer tennis player. The year before Nadal had also triumphed in the epic Wimbledon final, still considered by many to be the greatest match of all time. He was the alpha male. There was no question of his supremacy.

And yet Rafa remained extraordinarily humble. A tale is told from 2008 when Rafa walked into the players’ canteen after losing in the semi-final of the Australian Open. Nadal walked up to the cash register with a bag of chippies and passed over his tournament badge. The cashier swiped it and apologetically told Nadal his tournament allowance was used up, but he could have the chippies for free.

Nadal, who was still in his tennis gear and had no cash in his pocket, politely said, ‘‘No thank you,’’ and walked away.

He has never felt entitled. He has never behaved as if he were better than you and I. That same year he was mobbed at the Beijing Olympics. But Nadal had time for everyone and still won the gold medal in the singles.

Jamie Staff, a gold medalwinning British cyclist, bumped into Nadal in the village laundry room. Staff said to the BBC, ‘‘I didn’t bother him but he was shoving all his colours and whites in together. I really wanted to say, ‘Dude, you’re going to have a nightmare with that’.’’

Every athlete wants to talk to the tennis stars at the Olympics. The hassle is such that Federer and Murray decided they could no longer handle it and checked into private accommodation. But Rafa was back in Rio in 2016, mixing with the village multitudes, carrying the flag at the opening ceremony with a great, goofy grin, a man of the people and of his people.

Mobbed, overwhelmed, and playing with a wrist injury, Nadal partnered with his friend Marc Lopez and still won gold in the doubles. Rafa fell to the ground and cried. Friendship, Spain and the Olympics meant more than personal glory.

So many things set him apart. The 11 French titles is inconceivable, but wonder this. The serve is the most important single shot at the top of men’s tennis now, because of the improvement in racquets and balls. It can be overpowering. Yet Rafa never had a serve to overpower. But he was still the best at his peak because of the sheer variety and brilliance of his groundstrokes.

And yet we keep coming back to that humility. Nadal used to fly home to his family in Spain on the budget airline Easyjet, play a bit of golf at home, go fishing with his dad, have dinner with his grandmother on Sunday evening.

And then from out of a blue sky Nadal’s parents split up after nearly 30 years of marriage. Nadal wrote, ‘‘My family had always been the holy, untouchable core of my life, my centre of stability and a living album of my wonderful childhood memories . . . I suffered on behalf of my father, my mother and my sister, who were all having a terrible time.’’

Home was where Nadal could escape ‘‘the celebrity madness’’. Now ‘‘where there had been laughter and jokes, a heavy silence hung’’. His mind and his body broke for a while. His knee and his brain couldn’t take the strain. ‘‘The man inside had lost all love of life.’’

But here he is again, bouncing like a boxer before the start of his quarter-final match against Frances Tiafoe. Maybe he will win, maybe he won’t, but for me there can be no better man of tennis. Nadal’s mind is stronger than Federer’s, if the flesh is weaker, and I also believe Nadal to be the better shot-maker, the red dirt of Paris tells the story.

You may not expect to see a chivalrous knight in an orange muscle-man singlet, but then Rafa is a man apart. He plays the game like no-one else, and yet he is an everyman. Even at his lowest moment Nadal could still say, ‘‘I’ve never reached the point of hating tennis, as some professional players say they have. You can’t hate something, I don’t think, that puts the food on the table and has given you almost everything you have in life.’’

Viva Rafa.