Dominic Bliss - Rafa Nadal: The King of the Court

Rafa after his win at the Australian Open in 2022.

Its true that I went through some tough situations during all my career. But with the positive attitude and with the right people around they were a key I was able to find a way to keep going.

Rafa Nadal

Young Rafa with a trophy he won at Club Tenis Manacor.

I n the old days, Manacor was famous for two things: furniture making and artificial pearls. Since the early noughties, though, both those industries have been totally eclipsed by the constantly growing renown of one famous Mallorcan arguably the most famous Mallorcan ever to draw breath Rafa Nadal. Now recognised throughout the world, this tennis player, who (at the time of writing) had 21 Grand Slam singles titles to his name, has placed his home town firmly on the map.

In the grand scheme of things, Manacor is no special town. After the capital, Palma de Mallorca, its the second or third most important centre on the island, depending on your opinion.

The guidebooks are not especially kind. Home town of the tennis star Rafael Nadal, industrial Manacor declares its business long before you arrive, with vast roadside hoardings promoting its furniture, wrought-iron and artificial pearl factories, says the Rough Guide. On the strength of these, Manacor has risen to become Mallorcas second city, much smaller than Palma but large enough to have spawned unappetising suburbs on all sides. Locals, however, insist that Manacor is a big town, not a city, and in keeping with this, its old centre has been attractively restored, its more important buildings polished and scrubbed, its avenues and piazzas planted with shrubs and trees.

Plain and rather industrial would be a fair way to describe the town, although it does have some prettier buildings. The town website boasts of its school of music and dance, its history museum, its library, its Catalan language institute, its theatre. These are all just sideshows, though, to the towns main act its most famous son.

Rafas name is now inextricably linked to the island he was born on and still inhabits. Every Mallorcan, native and ex-pat immigrant alike, knows who he is, what he does, and what he looks like. It wouldnt be unreasonable to dub Rafa Senor Mallorca.

Rafael Nadal Parera was born on June 3rd 1986. Like all Spaniards, his first family name the surname that everyone knows him by is courtesy of his father, Sebastin Nadal, while his second surname derives from his mother, Ana Mari Parera. Incidentally, in Mallorqui, the Catalan dialect spoken across the island, Nadal means Christmas from the same root as the English word natal, as in the birth of Jesus Christ.

Rafa started playing tennis at the age of four, at his local club, Club Tenis Manacor, on Avenida del Parc (Park Avenue), on the east side of the town centre. Modernised since those early days, the facility now includes five tennis courts, two squash courts and two padel courts the latter for a popular ball sport played on a smaller walled court. But back in the early 1990s, when Rafa first started hanging out there, you might politely describe it as unassuming. The tacky-looking central clubhouse with a restaurant on the first floor used to serve good pizzas alongside a well-stocked bar. The dcor, though, was shabby mid-century, in need of a bit of love.