By Chris Oddo | @TheFanChild | Thursday March 13, 2025
On the “Served with Andy Roddick” podcast, Rafael Nadal joins the former US Open champion for an extremely candid interview. Rafa talks for an hour with Roddick and all of the interview is great.
But when the conversation turned to Nadal talking about his Big Three rivals Roger Federer and Novak Djokovic, ears are sure to perk up. Not sure we’ve ever heard Nadal talk about the nuts and bolts of his tennis this way. Because when he played he was always worried about giving up too much of his tactics.
Now that he’s retired he can finally speak frankly about what he was dealing with when facing these two giants of the game in the most incredible era that men’s tennis has ever seen.
Check the full episode below:
And here are some incredible snippets that we’ve transcribed for you:
Nadal on Why Federer-Nadal was more attractive to fans than Djokovic-Nadal
In my opinion that’s why the rivalry with Roger was a little bit more attractive for the fans, than Novak against me. Even if I played more times with Novak, and we played exactly the same number of important matches, or even more. Because with Roger I think the strategy was more clear.
Nadal on the tactics of Federer vs Nadal
I was trying to do one thing, he was trying to do another. In some way I was trying to kill his backhand all the time, and even for me, if I had the chance to play the shot down the line, I was saying to myself: Okay, when I have to play the shot down the line it’s only for two reasons: one, for the winner. The other is because I need to get him away from that side to create more space again.
And he was trying to avoid that.
He was trying to play aggressively. Everytime when he was hitting his forehand I felt like I had to step back, because his forehand, for me, is the best that I played against. It was a little bit more like a chess match. Everybody knew what was going to happen, everybody knew what the strategy was going to be. And then when he was playing very well, he beat me, when I was playing well I beat him. At the beginning of my career, I beat him more on clay and on hardcourts it had been much more difficult.
Nadal on why 2017 Federer was the most difficult version of Federer he ever faced:
Then arrived the moment that I was able to beat him on hard courts a couple of times. And then at the end of his career I think he made a step forward. He was playing much more aggressively and, for me, he was making a mistake against me at the beginning of his career, by playing with his backhand topspin, which gave me the chance to keep hitting forehands against his backhand. Then at the end of the career he started to go in and take more risk.
For me, honestly in 2017, for a while it was the best level of his career – for me. You felt that you were in his hands. Of course on hardcourts. On clay, it was little bit different. He played very, very aggressively and his serve was so difficult to read for me, it was very difficult to predict what was going on.
Nadal on what made the Djokovic rivalry different:
Against Novak it was a little bit different. We can have a strategy, but at the end it is about… I need to play well. We don’t play the same style of course, but there was not a clear strategy like I had against Roger, where I would damage his backhand. Against Novak I didn’t have that feeling. The feeling was that I would need to play very well for a long time, and know that I had to adjust things.
Nadal on why Djokovic had the best ball control ever
I couldn’t play too many times against his backhand, especially high balls because then he takes the ball quicker and puts you in a very difficult position, so I started to use the slice more against him, and sometimes it worked for me well, and sometimes against Novak it was good for me to play to the middle. Don’t give him a lot of angles. With Novak when you were able to open him, if you don’t really create a lot of damage, he was able to open you more. In terms of control – ball control – I think he is the best I ever played, and that I ever saw.
