TORONTO — When it comes to the Nadals of Manacor on the Balearic Island of Majorca, it's all about family.
Earlier this month, when Rafael Nadal won at Wimbledon, his parents, Sebastian and Ana Maria, and younger sister, Isabel, were all there — as well as aunt Marilen and uncles Miguel Angel, Toni and Rafael.
The latter namesake was seated opposite the traditional friends box at Wimbledon and was a particularly vocal partisan whom Nadal often looked up to during difficult moments in his unforgettable five-set duel with Roger Federer.
Uncle Rafael played second-division soccer and some tennis, but the brothers all paled before Miguel Angel, who was a three-time member of the Spanish national World Cup soccer team (1994, 1998 and 2002) and was nicknamed the Beast of Barcelona when he played elite-league competition.
Nadal's father, Sebastian, was easily the least athletic. "He's the only one who doesn't play any sports, almost nothing," said uncle Toni, who is Nadal's tennis coach.
Toni played soccer and was a good tennis player, ranked top 30 in Spain at one point. He also was the teaching pro at the local club in Manacor.
It was there that future four-time French Open champion Nadal first hit tennis balls at the age of 3.
"I could tell right away he had a good talent for tennis," Toni said this week in French, a language he prefers to English. "At 5 and 6, he played well for his age.
"I knew he had a chance to be really good when he won the championships [at two years younger than his age category] of our islands from 8 until he was 12. That was incredible because nobody had done that."
Toni, 48, was the first in his family to play tennis and one day asked the sports-crazy (especially soccer) Nadal to try tennis.
At first, Nadal hit with two hands on both sides, but, in what turned out to be an historic move for the tennis world, Toni decided he should play left-handed.
"He was left-footed for soccer, so I thought he would also be left-handed for tennis," Toni said. "Also, he hit a little harder with his left hand than his right. I thought he should play tennis with his left hand. But it is true, the only thing Rafael does with his left hand is play tennis."
When he broke through at the French Open in 2005, the fast, strong Nadal would win by simply using superior athleticism. Toni's coaching credo is to have his player run less than the opponent.
"When you have success with what you're doing, it's always hard to change," he said. "When Rafael was young, he always played aggressively.
"What happened was that when he started with the pros at Monte Carlo [in 2003], the others were all better than him. So the shots that were okay for him in the juniors were no longer as good in the pros. He wanted to win, so he had to run more."
To change that, Nadal has gradually moved up closer to the baseline and flattened his groundstrokes to get more penetration.
According to Toni, the high-profile success of Miguel Angel, who also plays tennis, has been a plus in Nadal's development.
"It's like in any town when you see someone that is a good athlete," he said. "We had someone in the family that made it, playing [soccer] for FC Barcelona and Spain. It was good because Rafael didn't make [becoming a sportsman] into something really exceptional."
Toni's coaching has been key to Nadal's success — and it certainly impresses seven-time Grand Slam champion Mats Wilander.
"If you bring a guy from when he's a little kid," the Swede said, "and you're still with him, and he's dominating like he is now, you have to be one of the great coaches of the world, maybe the greatest. Rafael is going to win at least five more Grand Slams."
The crowning glory of Toni's mentoring was at Wimbledon when Nadal became the first Spaniard since Manuel Santana in 1966 to triumph there.
It is somewhat improbable that the Nadal family's tennis success can be traced back to notorious bad boy Ilie Nastase of Romania.
Recalling how he got going in tennis, Toni said: "I saw the [1972 Grand Prix] Masters in Barcelona on television when Nastase played. He was my idol. That's why I started to play."
However, Toni would likely not have been at ease trying to coach the obstreperous Romanian.
"La mentalité [the mental part], that's what I do best," he said of his strength as a coach. "And, as with everything in life, it's important to talk. I was a hard coach when Rafael was young. I helped make him tough when it came to practising, and to little things like when he drinks water or not."
Turning from disciplinarian to philosopher, Toni said of his homeland, "The people of Majorca are tranquil. They don't really ever get too worked up about anything. We'll often say, 'Till tomorrow, tomorrow.' And we'll also say something else, 'It's the same, whatever you do, it's the same … and then you die.' "
About the Majorca effect on Nadal, he added: "I think Rafael is a very good player who's known all over the world, but he's exactly the same as he was when he was young. He does the same things and I think that's good. Not for tennis, but for life.
"We people of Majorca have a good attitude about life."
Special to The Globe and Mail
