Rafael Nadal – “I Am Delighted to Train With Novak Djokovic”

Published 10/28/2019, 1:25 PM EDT

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The tennis towers, Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic together flew from Kazakhstan to France for the Rolex Paris Masters 2019. On Saturday, both the knights of the sport shared the practice courts.

Nadal was happy to share the same surface of tennis with Djokovic and their training regime was scheduled by Rafa’s coach, Carlos Moya. “It was Carlos Moya who prepared the training for me and I am delighted to train with Novak, without any problem,” Rafael Nadal acknowledge.

The Spaniard, Rafa Nadal considers it to be abnormal that his practice session with Djokovic became a matter of discussion. The arch-rivals treat themselves to be mere tennis players and just like others on the tour, they are practicing together.

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“This is a sport. To make the game an abnormality and a rivalry taken out of context I think it would be a mistake. I don’t understand sport like that. I think that my main rivals have not understood it that way and that is why we have a time in the world of tennis in which everything that is happening is lived quite normally,” Rafael Nadal continued.

Also, Rafa’s coach, Moya pointed out “Why can’t we train with Djokovic?”

The pair has locked horns 54 times in their careers and Novak holds an upperhand in their head-to-head statistics by two matches. Their latest meeting came at Rome Masters this year and Rafa was victorious on the Italian clay.

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Nadal’s path of the Paris finals has now become effortless with the withdrawal of World Number threeRoger Federer on Monday. The potential finalists of the Paris Masters 2019 tournament are Novak Djokovic and Rafael Nadal and before that they need to pass the test of the NextGen of tennis.

In the quarterfinals, Djokovic might take on Stefanos Tsitsipas (he lost to the Greek in the quarters of the Shanghai Masters) and in the semifinals he might face the the ‘new machine man,’ Daniil Medvedev, who defeated Novak in Monte-Carlo and Cincinnati

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On the day one of Rolex Paris Masters 2019, Marin Cilic, Fernando Verdasco, Radu Albot, Milos Raonic, Jan-Lennard Struff and Cristian Garin are all through to the second round of the Parisien hard-court tournament.

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Mahalakshmi Murali

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Mahalakshmi Murali joined EssentiallySports in 2018 as a tennis author and has gone on to pen more than 1800 engaging articles, probing into various aspects of the sport and its illustrious players. With her expertise on the sport, Mahalakshmi has interviewed stalwarts from the sport such as Serena WIlliams’ coach Patrick Mouratoglou and Kevin Anderson’s physio, Carlos Costa. Equipped with her vast experience and a keen understanding of the sport, Mahalakshmi now co-heads the tennis department.
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