Word: nadal
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After studying the exotic wildlife of the Galápagos Islands, Charles Darwin surmised that animals can develop unique traits when they evolve in isolation. In the tennis world, Rafael Nadal is such an animal. Based on the island of Majorca, Nadal and his family shunned mainstream training programs as he grew up, preferring the more homespun methods of Rafael's uncle Toni, whose tennis credentials consist of a brief stint competing on the national circuit. Passing up funding from Spain's national tennis academy, and scholarship money from America's private academies, Rafael and Toni would travel...
...Whatever; it's worked. The approach ultimately produced an unorthodox, physical and devastatingly effective game that has taken Nadal, 22, to the top of men's tennis. In 2008, he recorded one of the sport's most successful seasons, becoming the first player since Bjorn Borg in 1980 to win on the slow clay of Roland Garros in Paris and the slick grass of Wimbledon in the same year, while also picking up an Olympic gold and the ATP's top ranking. Given all that, you might expect Nadal to stick with what's working. But he and, most especially...
...athletes develop their own mix of style and technique. But Nadal's peculiarity is quantifiable. San Francisco?based tennis researcher John Yandell has used video-capture technology to record the topspin of Nadal's forehand. He found that Nadal's shot rotates at an average of 3,200 times a minute. Andre Agassi, one of the game's great shotmakers, generated 1,900 rotations per minute in his prime, and current world No. 2 Roger Federer, whose forehand is considered among the game's best, generates 2,700. As U.S. Davis Cup captain Patrick McEnroe has said of Nadal...
Before the evening ended at 2 a.m., the Adrias slipped me a CD. On its front were the words Bon Nadal, Catalan for "Merry Christmas." I had commissioned TIME's first piece on Adria back in 2000 and we'd become friends after being seated together at the gala dinner for the TIME 100 of 2004, of which Ferran was one. Since then, Ferran Adria has become an even more popular and influential global cultural figure. He has been hailed as an artist at Germany's prestigious Documenta arts festival in Kassel, and at Harvard he was rubbing elbows with...
...feels right in '08. Think about the year we've had in sports. A classic Super Bowl between the New York Giants and New England Patriots. Tiger Woods winning the U.S. Open, in overtime, on one leg. The Boston Celtics and Los Angeles Lakers in the NBA finals. Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer at Wimbledon. Michael Phelps. Usain Bolt...