Tennis player Rafael Nadal says during a press conference that he will not compete in the French Open, at the Rafa Nadal Academy in Manacor, on Mallorca, Spain, on May 18. The 22-time Grand Slam winner has battled to recover from a hip injury he sustained in January at the Australian Open, not playing since then.JAIME REINA/AFP/Getty Images
Cryogenic chambers, German gene therapy and careers that never end are so 2019. Post-pandemic, what the cool kids are into is victory laps, playing footsie with your fans and being famous forever.
With that in mind, Rafael Nadal triple-barrelled his news on Thursday.
First, Nadal will skip the coming French Open. He hasn’t played since bombing out of the Australian Open in January, so that wasn’t a shocker. Still, it’s the first time he’s missed his personal major in 19 years, so it’s newsworthy.
Second, he’s taking most of the rest of the year off to recover from injury.
“I have no intention of continuing to play for the next few months,” Nadal said. So no French, no Wimbledon and, depending on your definition of “few,” no U.S. Open.
Third, he’s quitting. Kind of. Well, maybe.
Nadal turns 37 in a couple of weeks. He said he’s taking time off this season so that he has “an opportunity to enjoy next year.”
Then he tossed off, “That’s probably going to be my last year in the professional tour.”
Before anybody could react to that bombshell, Nadal was already hedging: “I can’t say 100 per cent that it’s going to be like this, because you never know what’s going to happen.”
So the headline is “Rafael Nadal Announces Retirement at Some Imminent, Yet Indeterminate, Future Point Because You Never Know What’s Going to Happen.”
Across the sports media world, everyone’s talking about Nadal retiring. That’s not what happened. Instead, Nadal relieved himself of the pressure to retire, because now he is in a permanent state of retiring, whether he retires or not.
Nadal has become the last man standing at your dinner party. You’ve managed to get him as far as the front hallway, but he’s planted himself there. He’s got his coat in his hands, and just remembered that he wanted to tell you one more story. Is he ever going? Theoretically. But we have yet to see that theory in practice.
One other notable thing about this ‘announcement’ – Nadal did it at his tennis academy in Malaga. The mood was very ‘new CEO charms stakeholders.’
Nadal was up on a stage in jeans that looked like he’d been dropped into from a great height. He looked tanned and commanding. The screen behind him was branded “by Movistar” – a Spanish telecom giant.
This was less John McEnroe and more Jeff Bezos. Here’s a guy setting up his next act, while taking advantage of a few million dollars in free advertising. It was the move of a seasoned media operator.
Athletes generally, and tennis players in particular, are no longer contract workers. They are conglomerates. As long as they’re good enough, tennis (or car-racing or soccer) is one part of their portfolio. There’s also a sponsorship division, a branding division and a business-development division.
In your 20s, you establish yourself as a player. In your 30s, you establish your business. The goal is slowly reducing your reliance on sports as a marketing and revenue stream, while you amp up everything else.
This can’t be done all at once. You can’t be all in on winning Grand Slams one day and then trying to figure out how to get your tennis-court clay comped the next. You need years to transition.
That’s what retirement announcements have become. A signal to the market that you’re disrupting your own business.
Roger Federer led the way in this regard. He was functionally retired long before he actually retired. For the past few years of his career, he only played the Slams he thought he had an outside chance of winning. Whenever he needed a media boost, he knew he could show up and hint around retiring, without doing it.
In the interim, he transitioned from tennis guy to professionally suave guy. Now long gone, he still promotes everything from clothing (Uniqlo) to champagne (Moët & Chandon) to luggage (Rimowa). The last few years he was on tour proved Federer didn’t need to play tennis in order to provide value as a brand ambassador.
Serena Williams did the same thing. By the time she was peace-ing out at the U.S. Open last year, she was more keen to talk about her new venture-capital business than recap her tennis war stories.
This is the new legendary sports career – a career so great that it never needs to end. Long after you stop playing, you are still a player.
No wonder Nadal wants to spin this last stage out for as long as possible. He isn’t as well practised a salesperson as Federer or Williams. While they were laying the groundwork for their post-career careers, Nadal was too busy busting his hump in rehab. He wasted a lot of time trying to be healthy enough to play tennis.
Having reached cruising altitude, that’s what he’ll do for a while – cruise. Nadal just bought himself 18 months.
There’s no way he’s leaving without playing in one more Wimbledon, or one more Olympics. But wouldn’t it be perfect if he left right after winning a final French Open? So that means Roland Garros 2025 at the earliest. We could be talking two years from now.
If that happens, some people will complain that Nadal has become one of those classic rock acts that goes out on its “final tour” once every few years.
With that in mind, Nadal was already laying out his retort.
“I don’t deserve to end like this,” he said in Spanish. “I’ve worked hard enough throughout my career for my end not to be in a press conference.”
Like most things in life, ‘deserve’ has nothing to do with it. You grab what you can.
As of right now, no one in history grabbed more from their careers than Nadal. His 22 Grand Slams (he’s tied with Novak Djokovic) won’t stand as a record. But one suspects that long after that number has fallen, Nadal will still be a name people recognize and, more important, be willing to pay to get next to.
EDMONTON – The Edmonton Oilers signed defenceman Travis Dermott to a professional tryout on Friday.
Dermott, a 27-year-old from Newmarket, Ont., produced two goals, five assists and 26 penalty minutes in 50 games with the Arizona Coyotes last season.
The six-foot, 202-pound blueliner has also played for the Vancouver Canucks and Toronto Maple Leafs.
Toronto drafted him in the second round, 34th overall, of the 2015 NHL draft.
Over seven NHL seasons, Dermott has 16 goals and 46 assists in 329 games while averaging 16:03 in ice time.
Before the NHL, Dermott played two seasons with Oilers captain Connor McDavid for the Ontario Hockey League’s Erie Otters. The team was coached by current Edmonton head coach Kris Knoblauch.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 13, 2024.
PHILADELPHIA (AP) — The driver charged with killing NHL hockey player Johnny Gaudreau and his brother Matthew as they bicycled on a rural road had a blood-alcohol level of .087, above the .08 legal limit in New Jersey, a prosecutor said Friday.
Gaudreau, 31, and brother Matthew, 29, were killed in Carneys Point, New Jersey, on Aug. 29, the evening before they were set to serve as groomsmen at their sister Katie’s wedding.
The driver, 43-year-old Sean M. Higgins of nearby Woodstown, New Jersey, is charged with two counts of death by auto, along with reckless driving, possession of an open container and consuming alcohol in a motor vehicle. At a virtual court hearing Friday, a judge ordered that he be held for trial after prosecutors described a history of alleged road rage and aggressive driving.
“’You were probably driving like a nut like I always tell you you do. And you don’t listen to me, instead you just yell at me,’” his wife told Higgins when he called her from jail after his arrest, according to First Assistant Prosecutor Jonathan Flynn of Salem County.
The defense described Higgins as a married father and law-abiding citizen before the crash.
“He’s an empathetic individual and he’s a loving father of two daughters,” said defense lawyer Matthew Portella. “He’s a good person and he made a horrible decision that night.”
Higgins told police he had five or six beers that day and admitted to consuming alcohol while driving, according to the criminal complaint. He also failed a field sobriety test, the complaint said. A prosecutor on Friday said he had been drinking at home after finishing a work call at about 3 p.m., and having an upsetting conversation with his mother about a family matter.
He then had a two-hour phone call with a friend while he drove around in his Jeep with an open container, Flynn said. He had been driving aggressively behind a sedan going just above the 50 mph speed limit, sometimes tailgating, the female driver told police.
When she and the vehicle ahead of her slowed down and veered left to go around the cyclists, Higgins sped up and veered right, striking the Gaudreas, the two other drivers told police.
“He indicated he didn’t even see them,” said Superior Court Judge Michael J. Silvanio, who said Higgins’ admitted “impatience” caused two deaths.
Higgins faces up to 20 years, a sentence that the judge said made him a flight risk.
Higgins has a master’s degree, works in finance for an addiction treatment company, and served in combat in Iraq, his lawyers said. However, his wife said he had been drinking regularly since working from home, Flynn said.
Johnny Gaudreau, known as “Johnny Hockey,” played 10 full seasons in the league and was set to enter his third with the Columbus Blue Jackets after signing a seven-year, $68 million deal in 2022. He played his first eight seasons with the Calgary Flames, a tenure that included becoming one of the sport’s top players and a fan favorite across North America.
Widows Meredith and Madeline Gaudreau described their husbands as attached at the hip throughout their lives. Both women are expecting, and both gave moving eulogies at the double funeral on Monday.
MIAMI GARDENS, Fla. (AP) — The Miami Dolphins will bring in another quarterback while starter Tua Tagovailoa deals with his latest concussion, coach Mike McDaniel said Friday.
For now, Skylar Thompson will be considered the Dolphins’ starter while Tagovailoa is sidelined. Tagovailoa left Thursday night’s 31-10 loss to Buffalo in the third quarter with the third known concussion of his NFL career, all of them coming in the last 24 months.
“The team and the organization are very confident in Skylar,” McDaniel said.
McDaniel said the team has not made any decision about whether to place Tagovailoa on injured reserve. Tagovailoa was expected at the team facility on Friday to start the process of being evaluated in earnest.
“We just have to operate in the unknown and be prepared for every situation,” McDaniel said, noting that the only opinions that will matter to the team will be the ones from Tagovailoa and the medical staff.
McDaniel added that he doesn’t see Tagovailoa playing in Miami’s next game at Seattle on Sept. 22.
“I have no idea and I’m not going to all of a sudden start making decisions that I don’t even see myself involved in the most important parts of,” McDaniel added. “All I’m telling Tua is everyone is counting on you to be a dad and be a dad this weekend. And then we’ll move from there. There won’t be any talk about where we’re going in that regard … none of that will happen without doctors’ expertise and the actual player.”
Tagovailoa was 17 for 25 passing for 145 yards, with one touchdown and three interceptions — one of which was returned for a Buffalo score — when he got hurt. Thompson completed eight of 14 passes for 80 yards.
Thompson said he feels “fully equipped” to run the Dolphins’ offense.
“What’s going to lie ahead, who knows, but man, I’m confident, though,” Thompson said after Thursday’s game. “I feel like I’m ready for whatever’s to come. I’m going to prepare and work hard and do everything I can to lead this team and do my job.”
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