100 Best Rafael Nadal Quotes

April 1, 2023

Top 100 Rafael Nadal Quotes (2023)

Check out these awesome Rafael Nadal quotes from one of tennis’ all time greats.

Rafael Nadal is a Spanish professional tennis player.

He has been ranked world No. 1 for 209 weeks, and has finished as the year-end No. 1 five times.

He also holds the record for most consecutive weeks in the Top 10 of the ATP Rankings, having never left the Top 10 from April 2005 to March 2023

10 Best Rafael nadal Quotes

“People sometimes exaggerate this business of humility. It’s a question simply of knowing who you are, where you are, and that the world will continue exactly as it is without you.”

“I have no sense of humor about losing”

“Enduring means accepting. Accepting things as they are and not as you would wish them to be, and then looking ahead, not behind.”

“Losing is not my enemy…fear of losing is my enemy”

“However great your dedication, you never win anything on your own”

“The problem nowadays is that children have become too much the center of attention. Their parents, their families, everybody around them feels a need to put them on a pedestal. So much effort is invested in boosting their self-esteem that they are made to feel special in and of themselves, without having done anything.”

“Si falta pasión no se encuentra la victoria”

“The first point is always important, more so in a Wimbledon final”

“When Federer has these patches of utter brilliance, the only thing you can do is try and stay calm, wait for the storm to pass. There is not much you can do when the best player in history is seeing the ball as big as a football and hitting it with power, confidence, and laser accuracy.”

10 Career Best Quotes From Rafael Nadal

“I play each point like my life depends on it.”

“It’s not the time to look for excuses.”

“In your career you have a lot of good moments and bad ones. The important thing is to have enough motivation to keep working all the days with humility and trying to be a better player than before. I am going to try to continue doing this.”

“My motivation is tomorrow, just one day at a time, right?”

“The only way of finding a solution is to fight back, to move, to run, and to control that pressure.”

“I learned during all my career to enjoy suffering.”

“The glory is being happy. The glory is not winning here or winning there. The glory is enjoying practicing, enjoy every day, enjoying to work hard, trying to be a better player than before.”

“If somebody says I am better than Roger, I think this person doesn’t know anything about tennis.”

“However great your dedication, you never win anything on your own.”

“Is only a tennis match. At the end, that’s life. There is much more important things.”

10 Random Rafael Nadal Quotes

“I’m really, really emotional.”

“I’m not the best player in the history of tennis. I think I’m amongst the best. That’s true. That’s enough for me.”

“Stay healthy, do sports and above all have fun while doing sport. Competing or just for fun, whatever, simply enjoy and try your best. Working hard, working well with achievable goals normally pays off. Believe in the people that are with you and listen to those who have more experience.”

“If I am not playing at one hundred percent, it is going to be very difficult for me to win.”

“Even if I have already peaked, I have to believe I can improve. I wake up every morning, and go to practice, with the illusion that I’m going to get better that day.”

“You just try to play tough and focus point for point. Sounds so boring, but it’s the right thing to do out there.”

“I have lived my whole life with high intensity.”

“My motivation and aspiration is the same, being number one or being number five. So that’s the truth. And my goal is the same – it’s to always be happy playing, it’s to enjoy the game and improve always.”

“I will do as I usually do. Tomorrow is going to be a day like any other day.”

10 Inspirational Rafael Nadal Quotes

“I’d rather lose an argument than get into a long discussion in order to win it.”

“I’ll never have a tattoo – I just don’t like them, and when you’re old they can look a disaster. As for piercings, I don’t like them on men.”

“Everyone is entitled to have their own opinions.”

“You have to accept both losing and winning well. I’ve stayed calm when I’m winning and I’ve stayed calm when I’ve lost.”

“I don’t have any idols, any heroes, nothing, no.”

“I always had the theory that the most important thing is be happy, enjoy what are you doing, and be fresh mentally.”

“I appreciate a lot in this life; the things you cannot buy. Life is only once. I am happy being here and all the things that are a risk I normally avoid.”

“I live where I would like to live. I live in Majorca, Spain, and I am not sure there are better places.”

“Playing well or playing bad, I have to play aggressive. I must play aggressive.”

10 Meaningful Nadal Quotes

“It’s hard to say, ‘I don’t believe in God.’ I would love to know if God exists. But it’s a very difficult thing for me to believe.”

“I doubt about myself. I think doubts are good in life. The people who don’t have doubts I think only two things-arrogance or not intelligence.”

“That’s painful always to lose.”

“I love the beach. I love the sea. All my life I live within – in front of the sea.”

“I just try to win the match by fighting for every point, and running down every ball.”

“I always work with a goal – and the goal is to improve as a player and a person. That, finally, is the most important thing of all.”

“People sometimes exaggerate this business of humility. It’s a question simply of knowing who you are, where you are, and that the world will continue exactly as it is without you.”

“I play because I have fun, if I don’t have fun on the court, there is something wrong. I am just a 19 year old boy that likes to do what he likes, nothing else.”

“I have no interest in becoming a tax exile and living somewhere I don’t want to – I just want to be at home with my family.”

10 Awesome Rafael Nadal Quotes

“Always I believe that I can play better. But I am happy.”

“He has always been obedient, which is a sign of intelligence in a child because it shows you understand that your elders know better than you, that you respect their superior experience of the world.”

“You know, a lot of things changed. What never changed is the illusion to keep playing tennis, the illusion to keep doing well the things, and the illusion to be in a good position of the ranking and play these kind of matches.”

“Two weeks ago, I was in a fantastic situation, winning at Roland Garros. Now, losing in the first round, it’s tough. The tour continues. Life continues. This is a sport of victories, not a sport of losses. Nobody remembers the losses. I don’t want to remember the loss.”

“I was shy when I was a kid, I was very shy, but now I think I’ve improved a lot. I can speak OK with the media and with the people. My English is still bad but I feel a little bit better now than before.”

“The thing, when you’re down two sets to love, is to stay calm, even though it’s hard, because people are freaking out, people are worried for you.”

“When one gets beaten by somebody better, one has to know how to lose with humility. Sure, I could have served better. Sure, I could have hit my forehand harder. But the truth was this was like an avalanche, and there was no way to stop it.”

“I like fishing. Not actual fishing – I like the peace and quiet of being at sea. It’s different.”

“As a tennis player you can win and you can lose, and you have to be ready for both. I practised self-control as a kid. But as you get older they both – winning and losing – get easier.”

“I normally listen to Spanish music – well, Latin music. I like a lot of singers.”

“I tried to find a solution to the problem that I had, tried to find a way to start playing better.”

10 Life Quotes From Rafael Nadal

“I think the doubts are good in life. The people who don’t have doubts I think only two things: arrogance or not intelligence.”

“If he hadn’t made me play without water that day, if he hadn’t singled me out for especially harsh treatment when I was in that group of little kids learning the game, if I hadn’t cried as I did at the injustice and abuse he heaped on me, maybe I would not be the player I am today. He always stressed the importance of endurance. “Endure, put up with whatever comes your way, learn to overcome weakness and pain, push yourself to breaking point but never cave in. If you don’t learn that lesson, you’ll never succeed as an elite athlete”: that was what he taught me.”

“Se que cuando mi carrera acabe no seré un hombre feliz y quiero aprovecharla al máximo mientras dure.”

“And then, as I was bouncing the ball up and down on the grass, just about to wind up my body to serve, the umpire cut in. “Time violation: warning, Mr. Nadal.” I had apparently spent too long between points, gone over the legal limit of twenty seconds before I served—a rule that is enforced only rarely. But it’s a dangerous rule. Because once you’ve received that first warning, any subsequent violations lead to the deduction of points. My concentration had been put to the test. I could have made a scene. The crowd, I could tell, shared my indignation. But I knew, without having to give it a second thought, that to let my feelings show would do me no good. I’d risk losing that precious asset, my concentration. Besides, the momentum was with me and I was two points away from winning the second set. I put the umpire’s interruption immediately out of my mind and won the point with a terrific and, for me, very unusual shot.”

“I ran the risk of being mobbed for autographs. This is an occupational hazard that I accept and I try to take it with good grace. I can’t say “no” to people who ask me for my signature, even to the rude ones who just stick a piece of paper in front of me and don’t even say “please.” I’ll sign for them too, but what they won’t get from me is a smile. So going to the supermarket in Wimbledon, while an enjoyable distraction from the tension of competition, does have its pressures. The only place where I can go shopping in peace—where I can do anything like a normal person—is my home town of Manacor.”

“I learned that you always have to hang in there, that however remote your chances of winning might seem, you have to push yourself to the very limit of your abilities and try your luck. That day in Melbourne I saw, more clearly than ever before, that the key to this game resides in the mind, and if the mind is clear and strong, you can overcome almost any obstacle, including pain. Mind can triumph over matter.”

“The Rafa Nadal the world saw as he stormed onto the Centre Court lawn for the start of the 2008 Wimbledon final was a warrior, eyes glazed in murderous concentration, clutching his racquet like a Viking his axe. A glance at Federer revealed a striking contrast in styles: the younger player in sleeveless shirt and pirate’s pantaloons, the older one in a cream, gold-embossed cardigan and classic Fred Perry shirt; one playing the part of the street-fighting underdog, the other suave and effortlessly superior.”

“Clark Kent and Superman”

“All his fears—be they of the dark, of thunderstorms, of the sea, or of the disastrous disruption of his family life—obey a compelling need. “He is a person who needs to be in control of everything,” Pérez says, “but since this is impossible, he invests all he has in controlling the one part of his life over which he has most command, Rafa the tennis player.”

10 Rafael Nadal Training Quotes

“And of one thing I have no doubt: the more you train, the better your feeling. Tennis is, more than most sports, a sport of the mind; it is the player who has those good sensations on the most days, who manages to isolate himself best from his fears and from the ups and downs in morale a match inevitably brings, who ends up being world number one.”

“That’s why just about every top professional athlete has been laid low by injury, sometimes a career-ending injury. There was a moment in my career when I seriously wondered whether I’d be able to continue competing at the top level. I play through pain much of the time, but I think all elite sports people do. All except Federer, at any rate. I’ve had to push and mold my body to adapt it to cope with the repetitive muscular stress that tennis forces on you, but he just seems to have been born to play the game. His physique—his DNA—seems perfectly adapted to tennis, rendering him immune to the injuries the rest of us are doomed to put up with.”

“So there was fun and magic in my relationship with Toni, even if the prevailing mood when we trained was stony and severe.”

“The rest of the family looked on with a bemusement that, in the case of Rafa’s mother, occasionally gave way to anger. His father, Sebastián, had his misgivings. His uncle Rafael wondered sometimes whether Toni was pushing his nephew too hard. His godfather, his mother’s brother, Juan, went so far as to say that what Toni was doing to the child amounted to “mental cruelty.”

“I looked at you there, a big, grown-up champion with his arms in the air, and suddenly my mind leapt back in time and I saw an image of a deadly serious, skinny little boy of seven training on a court back home in Manacor.”