Toni-Rafa : End of the Road?

Published 02/13/2016, 3:41 PM EST

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The uncle and coach of Rafa, Toni Nadal has provided remarkable tutelage to the Spaniard for more than 20 years, a span in which the player has gone on to achieve multiple records and clinch 14 Grand Slam titles – the most by a player-coach duo. He did a great job training Rafa to play left-handed and imbibed brilliant tactics that proved to be the distinguishing factor from other top players.

But, after Rafa’s return from a troublesome injury late in 2014, the pairing of Toni-Rafa seems to be in danger as their effectiveness runs its course, a culmination of a glorious projectile of 26 years.

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The 29-year-old clearly struggled after his comeback. He failed to win a major in 2015, for the first time in 10 years. He lost to Dustin Brown in the second round of Wimbledon in 2015, was ousted by Fabio Fognini in the third round of US Open and again by Fernando Verdasco in the first round at the Australian Open 2016, marking only the second time in 44 major appearances that he’s not gone past the first round.

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Toni Nadal is isn’t oblivious to the considerable drop in Rafa’s performance and also believes that the era of dominance of the top players has started to ebb because of the highly competitive playing style of new players coming into the picture. “I understand that in sports, results come first and if you have to make a change, you have to do it. To lose so early in Australia is one of the biggest disappointments we have had because in the last four months we had been playing well”, Toni Nadal told Spanish radio station Cadena Cope on Wednesday. There might have been sparks where Nadal played well recently, but he failed to perform consistently at crucial times.

The current form of Nadal has led to critical remarks from John McEnroe, who stated that he should seek fresh ideas away from Toni and get ‘a new damned coach’.
He is not the only one who has had something critical to say about Rafael Nadal. Brad Gilbert, who is eminent for coaching the likes of Andre Agassi, Andy Roddick, Andy Murray and Kei Nishikori, tweeted about Rafa’s performance against Dustin Brown at Wimbledon last year. ‘’On no other surface does Rafa stand the entire match 3 feet behind baseline to rerun a big serve, I would have gone back for sure’’, was the first tweet. ’’Also for the 2nd starlight year Rafa never once changed return stance on 1st or 2nd serve, I feel that gave the server a big advantage…..’’, followed it. We couldn’t agree more on that bit of analysis.

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If at all Rafa considers a change in the coaching team, Brad Gilbert should be the first person in the list. Fresh ideas and inputs always help in unwinding and producing better results, like in the case of Novak Djokovic and Roger Federer when they joined forces with Boris Becker and Stefan Edberg respectively. The other coaches who could possibly achieve better results than Toni Nadal might be Ivan Lendl or Mats Wilander. Both of them have an impressive history in coaching and their involvement can potentially propel Rafa to greater heights.

 

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Written by:

Shivanjali Kumar

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I am pursuing B.Sc.(Hons.
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