“Victory belongs to the most tenacious.” Those are the words that wrap around Roland-Garros Stadium in both English and French, simultaneously taunting and inspiring the athletes duking it out for eternal glory on one of tennis’s grandest stages. Tenacity is what defines the French Open and it’s what drove the tournament’s favorite son, Rafael Nadal, to a record fourteen championships there.
The new Netflix docuseries Rafa — premiering May 29 — not only traces the Spanish sport icon’s rise, but also the frustrating years leading up to his eventual retirement. Like many other celebrity docs, Rafa lionizes its subject, but it does so by ironically exploring his flaws. Director Zach Heinzerling doesn’t just land insightful interviews with Nadal’s close-knit family and illustrious peers; he gets access to the press-shy Nadal’s most intimate moments, relaxing with his family at home and stressing out in the locker room before a match. (I could not believe I was watching Rafael Nadal’s own team making fun of the number of times the great man had to pee before stepping out on court!)
Rafa essentially follows two timelines. Heinzerling embeds himself with Nadal and his inner circle in the final years of his career, giving fans rare access to the athlete’s practices, conditioning, and doctor’s appointments, but he also traces Nadal’s career in four major acts, battling his three greatest foes: injury, Roger Federer, Novak Djokovic, and, once again, injury.
Rafa Episode 1 takes us all the way back to the start of Nadal’s career, when he was a teenager phenom tapped by his country to take on American star Andy Roddick in the 2004 Davis Cup final. After defeating the superstar to clench a win for his country, Nadal enjoyed a dizzying rise to the top of professional men’s tennis. In 2005, he won the French Open for the very first time, but was immediately sidelined by a foot injury. As Rafa reveals, this injury — Mueller–Weiss syndrome, a rare condition that a doctor explains Nadal gave himself by simply playing like Nadal — almost ended his career then and there.
Nadal was only able to continue playing tennis by wearing special orthotics that years later would contribute to even more injuries. In one chilling Episode 3 interview, Nadal owns up to taking so many anti-inflammatories throughout the 2010s that he now has perforations in his intestines.
“But if I hadn’t explored all that, I probably would have ten fewer Grand Slams,” Nadal says. “I’m not saying one or two, I’m saying ten or twelve. This is the reality.”
Rafa also delves candidly into the player’s mental health over the years. Tennis fans are already familiar with Nadal’s trademark twitches on the court, but Rafa reframes this quirky behavior as a serious side effect of his increasing anxiety that he fought to quell. Rafa also brilliantly addresses the “Uncle Toni” of it all. Toni Nadal coached his nephew to astounding success, but his methods could be seen by outsiders (and insiders!) as downright abusive. Nadal himself praises his uncle as both a coach and loving family member, but Heinzerling paints a picture of a far more complicated relationship. Love is definitely there — as the emotional payoff of Episode 2 “The Rainmaker” makes clear — but so is tension.
For all that Rafa is a deifying docuseries, no one comes out of the project looking better than Nadal’s wife, Mery. While the young Nadal was becoming an international sex symbol, posing in his underwear and appearing in Shakira music videos, he only had eyes for his younger sister’s friend. There’s absolutely hilarious footage of the young lovesick Rafa moaning that Mery won’t text him back. Meanwhile, Mery simply describes her husband as a constant fixture in her life, almost shrugging that she remembers attending his Holy Communion as a kid. Heinzerling cues up home video of the event, proving her point. As Nadal wrestles with the reality that his career is ending, it is Mery who steps up as his primary support, promising the start of a new life for him.
Rafa is hardly the first documentary following the final days of an athlete’s career, but it’s one of the only ones that feels brave enough to show the depth of sacrifice made for glory. Nadal may have made his own decisions with regard to his health, but it’s clear his family didn’t always agree. In the final episode, we actually get to see Nadal’s long-suffering foot and it looks, as someone jokes, “alien.” Not to fall into the cliche of comparing Nadal to Roger Federer, but Rafa is a far more introspective look at a man than last year’s Federer: Twelve Final Days, a glossy Prime Video film where the biggest source of tension was the retirement announcement leaking a few hours early on the internet. Rafa‘s grit matches the man.
Over the course of Rafa‘s four hour-long episodes, you’ll not only get to relive the legend’s greatest on court moments, but you’ll finally grasp just how much Nadal pushed his psyche and punished his body to achieve all that he did. What makes Rafa so compelling, though, is it forces you to sit with both the discomfort and the awe of what that all means. Tenacity is Nadal’s superpower, but also his curse.
Rafa will be streaming on Netflix on Friday, May 29.
