It’s the first time a non-English language docuseries has ever nominated for a Primetime Emmy, Netflix notes. Also, it takes up Nadal’s story in a largely present tense of early 2024 where he’s not No. 1 in the world, but No. 652, almost 38, nearly a year and a half out without winning a title and plagued by a chronic hip injury. This may be about a last dance.
It is certainly about a global icon battling sports players’ biggest challenge: The passage of time. Directed by Zach Heinzerling, Oscar nominated for “Cutie and the Boxer,” Rafa delivers some extraordinary statistics: A record 912 consecutive weeks in the Top 10, nearly 18 years, Nadal is the only player in tennis history to be ranked No 1 in three different decades His 14 French Open victories are the most ever in a single Grand Slam and his 112-4 record the greatest single tournament win rate of all time. The most extraordinary fact, however, bringing home the magnitude of his achievement, is delivered across the whole of the series itself.
Shuttling back and forth to his early childhood to his breakout 2004 Davis Cup victory and epic gladitorial matches against Roger Federer and Novak Djokovic, “Rafa” shows that he won only one Grand Slam – his first Roland-Garros in June 2004 – without playing in pain. In October 2004, he broke his foot, and when again, was diagnosed with Mueller-Weiss syndrome. By 2013 he’s carrying his own pain killers and at a U.S.
Open press conference can’t even sit in chair, falling onto the ground. Yet he continued playing another decade. Added to that, much of “Rafa” is shot in the intimacy of Nadal’s luxury home in Mallorca with his lovely wife María Francisca Perelló and child Rafalet, Heinzerling’s footage begging the question of why Nadal didn’t move on far quicker to his a family life in paradise.
This sense of place, of Mallorca, its bays, clouds, Rafa’s family, his sense of ease with them, or his playing with his little son, make for some of the strongest impacts in the series. Following his coach and uncle Toni’s advice, Nadal finally beat Roger Federer at Wimbledon in 2008, breaking Federer’s Open-Era-record five-year winning streak on grass, by playing high balls to Federer’s back hand, his weak point. He raised his game against Djokovic in 2012 hitting a more aggressive forehand.
More than anything else, however, “Rafa” works as an insistent multi-level psychological thriller, asking why he came to become such a great tennis player and why, 20 years later, he’s attempting one last comeback and is so reluctant to retire. That deep dive into the psychology, or maybe pathology, of success resonates far beyond tennis playing. He started very young to fight mental battles.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
