The Warrior
Rafael Nadal and His Kingdom of Clay
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- Pre-Order
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- Expected 15 May 2025
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- £12.99
Publisher Description
From the bestselling author of The Master, longlisted for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year.
An intimate, original biography of tennis legend Rafael Nadal, and the first to cover his entire career.
After his award-winning look at Roger Federer, Christopher Clarey, one of the world's pre-eminent tennis writers, focuses his lens on Nadal, the Spanish force of nature. When he arrived on the scene in 2005, the record for men's singles titles at the French Open stood at six. Nadal more than doubled that total to a mind-blowing fourteen titles: one of the greatest sporting achievements in history.
Nadal won big and won often on all of tennis's surfaces: securing two Wimbledon titles on grass and six on the US Open and Australian Open hard courts. But clay, the grittiest of the game's playgrounds, is where it all came together best for his whipping forehand and warrior mindset.
Clarey, who has covered Nadal since he was seventeen, draws on interviews over twenty years with Nadal, his team and rivals like Roger Federer and Novak Djokovic. Brimming with behind-the-scenes insight, The Warrior tells the story of a global sporting icon, interlacing man and place in a unique, must-read account of the evolution of excellence.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Journalist Clarey (The Master) focuses this entertaining portrait of tennis champion Rafael Nadal on his dominance of the French Open. Clarey credits Nadal's uncle and long-time coach, Toni Nadal, with introducing him to the sport when he was three and encouraging him at age 10 to adopt the left-handed forehand that became "the foundation of his dominance." Four years after winning his first ATP tour match at age 15, Rafael made his French Open debut, beating Mariano Puerta in the final. Nadal prevailed at the event 13 times after that, losing only four of the 116 matches he played there before retiring in 2024. Clarey traces this achievement through insightful breakdowns of Nadal's triumphs, describing, for instance, how he defeated "archrival" Roger Federer in the 2008 French Open by "controlling the baseline rallies and forcing Federer to run laterally far more than usual." Though the narrative focuses on Nadal, Roland-Garros's clay courts become a character in their own right as Clarey provides rich background on the event's history. For instance, he discusses how the Open's first winner in 1891 was likely a Brit whose name has been lost to history and how Chris Evert nabbed a record seven women's singles titles at Roland-Garros in the 1970s. It's a meticulous recap of one of tennis's great achievements.
