Every tennis fan felt compelled to make a decision in the midst of the sport’s recent golden era. Who was the best: Roger Federer, Novak Djokovic or Rafael Nadal?

By 2012, the Three Horsemen of men’s tennis were winning everything, couldn’t be beaten by anyone but each other, and were carrying the sport into the future with whirling topspin forehands and incredibly precise backhands. They expanded the possibilities of tennis perfection and I felt like I had to choose a side in the arms race.

Ultimately I chose Federer, the oldest but most successful up to that point. He never seemed to get too worked up or upset, the intended opposite of my game, which sometimes included broken rackets and indignant screams. He wore cool headbands instead of hats and his one-handed backhand was smooth. When he played against Djokovic, I nicknamed him “Roger Better-er” instead of “Novak Choke-ovic.”

Djokovic has spent the last 12 years convincing me that I chose the wrong side by declaring himself the greatest of all time with the most Grand Slams, the most weeks at No. 1 in the rankings and an Olympic god , reminiscent of Napoleon crowning himself emperor to show where he believed his power came from. Federer retired as perhaps the most dominant player of any decade, but Djokovic has stood the test of time.

The strange man was Nadal, who retired Thursday morning after a 23-year professional career in which he won 22 Grand Slams, second only to Djokovic. He is either the second or third best player of all time and dominated every clay court he stepped on. He had explosive reactions, a lively and personable charisma and is perhaps the most physically talented men’s tennis player in history.

He was almost perfect and will go down in history as the icon that he was. The next generation of tennis Terminators all owe Nadal the plan he wrote and the stature he maintained. But I’ll also remember the near misses and wonder if he could have been, or even should have been, better

At his peak, Nadal was a beast that even Djokovic and Federer couldn’t handle. His picturesque left-handed forehand spun faster than anyone else’s, allowing him to hit slow-bouncing balls on bouncy clay courts with the power of a thousand suns without making too many errors. He grew up on clay in Spain and it is unfair to the rest of the world – where hard and grass courts are more common – that Nadal’s talent was lost on that surface.

Of his 22 Grand Slam victories, 14 came at the French Open, the only major clay court tournament. Between 2005 and 2022, Nadal won four times in a row, three times, and choosing someone to beat him there was as clumsy as it was stupid. Not only did he feel inevitable, he actually was. His 81-game winning streak on clay is the longest of anyone on any surface, although it was three times as long. It was absurd, unbeatable and sometimes even boring. Nobody else had a chance. Always.

His body was built on a laboratory table to play tennis on sand. His legs were long and flexible, yet built like tree trunks, allowing him to slide to balls he wasn’t supposed to reach. Still, his shoulders and torso are compact, allowing his upper arms free range of motion to execute a variety of angled shots while maintaining power. While Federer and Djokovic beat everyone by playing perfect longer and more often, Nadal simply pulled out a shotgun and destroyed you.

He could always hit the ball harder than his opponents and so he figured out how to maximize that advantage. Nadal proved that running around the backhand to get to the forehand was a viable move, and in doing so he all but invented a tactic that has come to dominate modern men’s tennis. Why hit a weak, hard-to-control backhand when you can twist your upper third to grab, rip and deliver a 100 mile per hour forehand exactly where you want it?

Nadal was able to maintain his physical advantage over his two contemporaries until his body began to give up on it when Djokovic’s cold, ponderous style became too efficient to withstand. But he won the French Open again and again.

His one-sided dominance is a double-edged sword; both an unprecedented achievement and an argument against his greatness. Nadal won a Grand Slam on every surface at least twice among his 22 players, but it sometimes felt cheap that he had the French Open in the bag every year. Nadal knew this – towards the end he would skip other majors to ensure he was healthy enough for July. While Djokovic and Federer were locked in a war at every tournament they entered, Nadal picked up an additional hardcourt title here and there while quietly collecting the French Open and increasing his Slam count.

Should that diminish his greatness and make him 2B to Federer’s 2A, a man he has two more Grand Slams than him? Perhaps, although it’s fairer to say that the two men arrived at their heights through different calculations. It may be accurate to call Nadal “one of the greatest” grass-court and hard-court players and “by far the greatest” clay-court player in the history of men’s tennis, although he came to be “second best” using a different formula than that of the Swiss maestro. Portfolio.

And because of his physical prowess, his game shone on the long road to perfection that Federer and Djokovic took. No image of Nadal is complete without his powerful roar and full-body punches after spectacular victories, nor without his infectious smile that shows his tennis body communicating the right level of happiness after a victory.

Nadal’s retirement may have reminded me of everything he almost was, but in the end he was really, really great, no matter the degree. He was the bringer of his own destiny; completely inevitable as he marched on to another French Open, international fame and finally to the end. He showed that tennis is cool, explosive and passionate. Nadal was unique, but also the forerunner of today’s generation of physical players with massive forehands. Federer and Djokovic captured my imagination, but Nadal may have done more to make the game the beautiful battlefield it is today than either of them. I will remember him fondly for that.