Rafael Nadal adds close friend to the coaching team
Returning to the court after almost four months, world no. 2 Rafael Nadal was beaten by Kevin Anderson in the semi-final of the Mubadala World Tennis Championship, winning the opening set before falling down and deciding to withdraw from tomorrow's third-place match against Karen Khachanov. Despite a solid display in the opening set and a chance to close the match in straight sets, Nadal felt pain again and he decided to skip the rest of the week and travel to Brisbane where he is supposed to kick off the official season next week. After a long break and a surgery, Rafa is happy just for being able to play again and he hopes for a better run in Brisbane and Melbourne in his first competitive matches since September.
Carlos Moya will join Rafa in Melbourne and he added the third name to his coaching staff besides Moya and Francisco Roig for 2019, taking his great friend Bartolome Salva-Vidal from Rafa Nadal Academy to travel with him for some three months. Born in the same year and in the same place as Nadal, Tomeu Salva is one of his oldest friends, making the first tennis steps together and representing Spain at Junior Davis Cup 16 years ago! Tomeu is a European Junior Champion from 2004, beating the names like Jeremy Chardy, Lukas Lacko and Igor Sijsling en route to the title but failing to make an impression the professional Tour, never winning an ATP match and claiming six Futures titles from 11 finals.
Nadal and Salva played together on the Tour ever since 2001 when they were both making the first steps among the pros and they were beaten in the ATP final in Chennai and Barcelona in 2007. Salva decided to retire at the age of 22 (he played a few more tournaments after that, including the one with Rafa in Miami 2010) to chase a coaching career, becoming a hitting partner of Ana Ivanovic, the coach at Balearic Tennis Federation and playing in many different European leagues. Recently, Tomeu joined Rafa Nadal Academy at Mallorca, working with the biggest Spanish prospect Jaume Munar who enjoyed a breakthrough run in 2018 to crack the top-100 and enter the NextGen Masters in Milan.
Now, Tomeu will travel with Rafa to some tournaments and transfer that experience to the youngsters at their Academy. His close friend is confidence about Nadal's success in 2019, mentioning his everlasting desire to compete and constantly improve his game on regular basis, something he has been doing right after picking the tennis racquet for the first time. He was there with Rafa in Toronto last year when the great Spaniard claimed his 80th ATP title and he will try to guide Rafa towards more of the same in the season in front of us together with Moya and Roig.
from Tennis World USA http://bit.ly/2GGJt2y
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