2025—New York City
It was finally time for notes.
After a year of filming and another year of editing a four-part docuseries about 22-time Grand Slam champion Rafael Nadal, the moment of truth had arrived: it was time to show Rafa the first cut.
I had been dreading this moment for months. Until now, I'd enjoyed a surprising amount of creative freedom. But that freedom was about to be tested.
In documentary filmmaking, the notes process is a fork in the road. It can sharpen a project, deepen it, even save it. Or it can unravel the whole thing. And notes from a studio executive are very different from notes from the subject himself—especially when that subject is a global icon whose legacy is at stake.
Contractually, final cut belonged to the studio, not Rafa. But this was also the first authorized documentary of his career, and everyone understood the reality: if Rafa hated the series, or how he was portrayed, the project could collapse in a hundred different ways.
I hit send on the link to all four episodes.
2023—Australia—New Year's Eve
Rafa was late.
As I waited anxiously in the back of a cargo van knocking knees with Rafa’s team, I asked his publicist of twenty years, Benito Perez Barbadillo, "Is this normal?" He laughed, then turned to another coach. "Marc, is this normal?" The entire van burst out laughing.
Another five minutes passed.
Another coach quipped, "The guy is late every day, but when I'm a minute late, I get an earful about it."
The idea that Rafa was always late conflicted with the image of him I'd imagined. On court, he is defined by ritual and precision: meticulously aligning his water bottles so the labels face outward, wiping his forehead with one hand, then the other, and—of course—picking his wedgie. He is a man of habit. I assumed that precision extended to his life off the court.
The trunk opened. Tennis bags were tossed in. Rafa climbed into the van.
He said, in English: "Sorry I am late. My son…he kept me up all night."
I replied in Castellano, "Lo entiendo. Tengo una hija de cuatro años."
He nodded. "Bien. En español es mejor."
Of course now I had to maintain the illusion that I spoke fluent Spanish. In college I had studied in Argentina for a semester, so my Spanish was decent but not fluent enough for an in-depth interview about Rafa’s life and career.
As the van lurched forward, Rafa looked around suspiciously. Where was his coach, Carlos Moyá? "In the van behind us," Benito replied, avoiding my gaze. I was in Carlos's seat. The van's seating chart, another of Rafa's rituals, was now disrupted. I shrank in my seat.
It had only been two weeks since I'd gotten the call. A producer from Skydance asked if I was available to fly to Australia to film Rafael Nadal during what would likely be his final year on tour.
Rafa never wanted to do a documentary before, but as this was probably the last year, his team had convinced him it would be good for his legacy.
As the wheels turned in my head about what this film could be, the producer stopped me to clarify: this was not a job offer. It was an audition. After a few weeks of filming, Rafa—not the studio, not me—would decide whether I continued as director.
The wheels screeched to a stop and switched into reverse as horror stories of fellow directors tasked with celebrity docs—where the subject themselves was a producer—flashed before my eyes. What had once been a rigorous form of journalism had veered more commercial: a branding exercise in which the subject remained, in effect, the author. By and large, once a celebrity gets involved in their own documentary, the death knell of creative freedom rings out.
I had every reason to expect Rafa to be no different. I had no leverage. I was a director for hire, without final cut. But beyond that, I wondered what there was to his story to discover.
My knowledge of Rafa was limited, and I knew even less than most tennis fans did—which was still almost nothing. In press conferences, his broken English and modest charm made him likable, but not especially revealing. I knew him for his accomplishments and his never-say-die spirit on the court. But was there anything deeper there? And if there was, would he ever allow it to be shown?
I said yes, and soon I was on my way to Australia.
Two years earlier, Rafa had won the 2022 Australian Open in extraordinary fashion, rallying from two sets down against Daniil Medvedev to claim a twenty-first Grand Slam title, moving one ahead of Novak Djokovic and Roger Federer and at that time, the greatest male tennis player of all time. Months later, at thirty-six—ancient in tennis years—he won a record fourteenth French Open.
Then, the body that had so often betrayed him did so again. Returning to Australia the following January to defend his title, he tore a muscle in his left hip. After months of unsuccessful rehabilitation, he underwent surgery, ending his 2023 season.
A week before I got the call, Rafa posted a video announcing that 2024 would "likely" be his last year on tour. The wording—like everything Rafa says—was careful. The door remained slightly open, but the message was unmistakable: the end was near.
Suddenly, the series had an irresistible narrative: the comeback king’s final comeback. If anyone could return from another devastating injury to win a fifteenth Roland Garros title—or one last Olympic gold on the clay courts of Paris—it was Rafa.
"Are you nervous about playing competitive tennis again?"
He laughed. "Yes. I haven't played tennis in almost a year. I'm nearly thirty-eight years old. This could be a huge disaster."
This was my introduction to Rafa's habit of minimizing expectations. Even at the height of his powers, he spoke as though defeat were always around the corner. It was a way to lower the pressure, but it also led to a flatness on camera. Humility is an admirable quality, but it's not particularly sexy television.
In our first sit-down interview, the subject of his great rival came up—Roger Federer. In an attempt to get Rafa to acknowledge Federer's arrogance, I showed him a clip from the 2006 Wimbledon final in which, after winning his fourth consecutive title, Federer joked that Nike should enlarge the crest on his blazer to accommodate a fourth trophy. Then, almost as an afterthought, Federer turned to Rafa and added:
"I want to say it was a great tournament for Rafael, I honestly didn't think he was going to play the finals here this week."
Our cinematographer, Adam Uhl, anticipating a reaction, slowly pushed in on Rafa's face. Rafa looked up from the iPad, expressionless.
"It was surprising that I made the final. Federer was much better than me then. That is the truth."
I tried once more. "Yes—but to say to someone's face that you're surprised they made it that far...that's disrespectful."
But the harder I pushed, the more Rafa retreated from the idea, and then moved to counter it. Soon he was trying to convince me of how humble Roger was.
I eventually realized that interviews were probably the least reliable way to understand Rafa. Like many great athletes, he wasn't particularly interested in explaining himself. But unlike most celebrity documentary subjects, he wasn't interested in shaping the story either. He had no appetite for myth-making, and in fact resisted it. When I tried to get him to characterize Federer as his great rival, or frame their relationship in a more dramatic way, he resisted every attempt. Rafa wasn't going to hand you the perfect sound bite or summarize his own legacy. If you wanted to understand what drove him, you had to find it somewhere else—in his routines, his relationships, his habits, and the way he carried himself when he thought nobody was paying attention.
At the end of the day, Rafa laughingly sidebarred with our sound recordist, Juan Bertran, a fellow Spaniard: "This American isn't going to let me leave the chair until I say that Roger Federer was an asshole."
In his first match on the 2024 comeback tour, Rafa played Dominic Thiem, the 2020 U.S. Open champion. After a year off, Rafa was ranked #672 in the world. And although Thiem had fallen in the rankings, the match felt uncertain.
Rafa won in straight sets.
And things continued to go well. In the next round he cruised, 6–1, 6–2.
But in Rafa's world, you learn to keep your gaze on the present, not the future.
In the quarterfinal against Australian journeyman Jordan Thompson, Rafa took the first set. But during the second set, something shifted. He moved less fluidly. He grimaced after long rallies. Between points, he came to the bench and told his longtime physio, Rafael Maymó, that he had pain in his left hip—the same hip he'd surgically altered seven months earlier.
As Rafa walked back to serve, Carlos looked at Maymó and said, " ¡Hostia!." It was a word I would hear often. “Hostia” is a choose-your-own curse word. Fuck. Damn. Shit. Your pick.
Rafa eventually lost, walking off the court clearly in pain. I rushed back to the locker room, sensing this was a big moment. Normally cameras are not allowed in the locker room, but with Rafa there were exceptions. The tournament organizers knew this was likely his last season, and their respect for him opened doors.
Rafa sat shirtless, head in his hands. Moyá asked him why he didn't stop. Rafa didn't really have an answer—mostly because he doesn't know how to stop. This quality was his greatest weapon, but it also made it difficult to know when perseverance had become denial. As I filmed Carlos looking dismayed, Rafa uttered a line of distinguished prose: "In the basement of failures, there is always another floor below." The next day, before Rafa's MRI, I waited in the car with the team. The mood had shifted. The camera wasn't there to capture Rafa's comeback anymore. It was there to record the very thing he'd spent a year trying to outrun.
The doctor told him he had a muscle tear. It would take a minimum of three weeks to heal. The Australian Open was due to start in a week, which meant Rafa would have to withdraw. The goodbye tour was over—and without the goodbye.
I climbed into the front seat of the car outside the hospital. Then came Rafa. I sat there alone with him for what felt like an eternity, my camera three feet from his face. He looked angry. Annoyed. Shifting his gaze out the window, down to his phone, knees bouncing, then up at me.
This was only day seven with Rafa. I had no sense of how he felt about my presence. After a year of grueling recovery to come back for one more year, he had just been handed news of the one thing that could ruin it all—the one thing that had plagued his legacy, the one thing he had to avoid: another injury. And I had a camera glued to his face. Was I literally adding insult to injury?
I would come to learn—and appreciate—that Rafa is a method documentary subject. He is always in character. At the start of the shoot day he says hello, always courteous, but once the day begins he never stops to address you directly. He never slows down. He never gives you time to set up. There are no do-overs. You either capture the moment or you don't.
He had agreed to do this documentary, and he was going to abide by that agreement. There was no negotiation in the moment, no visible calculation about what should or shouldn't be filmed. If he had decided this process was worth doing, then the process itself deserved to be trusted. This is what I admire most about Rafa.
This is incredibly rare in the world of celebrity docs. Most celebrities, by nature, curate their images. They control the narrative—and the public is at their mercy. But Rafa is different. He doesn’t manage what you see—because it doesn’t occur to him to. In an industry that has turned celebrity access into a form of image management, this was disorienting—and instructive.
I returned from Brisbane with a few major unknowns. Was Rafa going to keep playing tennis? If the comeback story was no longer a comeback, what was it?
The next day, Benito called. Rafa was training to play in Doha, three weeks away, and we should plan to film it. There was no discussion about if I was a good fit; we were simply moving forward. Benito told me Rafa liked my easygoing temperament. I had a small footprint, and that was appreciated—more crew meant fewer seats for his team in the van. And more than anything, Rafa doesn't like to disappoint or displace his people.
A week later, the crew and I showed up in Mallorca. It was unclear what the plan was, or whether or not our presence was welcome. As we did every morning of practice, we set up inside Rafa’s long-time physio Maymó’s office, where Rafa received daily treatment on his ailing body.
Rafa looked awful. "My son has a cough. I haven't slept in three days."
As Maymó began working on Rafa's ailing foot, the two fell into what seemed to me an impromptu therapy session. It dawned on me that this was one of the few places Rafa opened up. Here is where I would see the real Rafa.
Rafa told Maymó he did not want to play in Doha. It was too soon; he wasn't ready. "I don't know if I have the motivation to come back."
Maymó replied, "Of course you do. You always do."
Then Rafa said, "I'm usually the positive one. But it feels different this time."
Rafa continued to drop out of tournaments. First Doha, then Indian Wells, then Monte Carlo. The press jumped in. “Retire already!” “Your time is up, old man! You had your chance to walk away with dignity after Roland Garros 2022.” “This is just sad.”
Yet, the question of should he retire or not never came up. He continued to practice, every day, waiting for his chance to return. The central question of the series had come into view: Why can’t Rafa just stop?
When Rafa was fourteen, he played the final of the under-14 Spanish National Championship against his close friend from Mallorca, Tomeu Salvá. Earlier in the tournament, Rafa had broken his pinky finger diving for a ball and landing awkwardly on his hand. His uncle and coach, Toni Nadal—a former tennis player who recognized Rafa's unusual talent when he was just three—told him to keep playing through the pain. Rafa won the tournament, then went straight to the hospital, where his hand was placed in a cast.
The story encapsulates Toni's philosophy, one he preached relentlessly to Rafa as a child and still speaks about today in lectures around the world: success is built through discipline, sacrifice, and the ability to endure discomfort. Confidence was not something Toni believed could be instilled through praise or encouragement. It had to be earned—through repetition, preparation, and a word that came up a lot: suffering.
After Rafa won another important junior tournament, his family wanted to celebrate. Toni worried the victory was inflating his ego. So he called the Spanish Tennis Federation, pretending to be a sports journalist, and asked for a list of the twenty-five previous champions of the event. Name after name went by. Rafa recognized only a handful. Toni turned to him and, in effect, said: this is the reality. This victory means nothing. More than that, a victory can be dangerous if it convinces you that you've arrived.
Rafa learned never to become too satisfied with success. There was always another gear, another mountain, another weakness to improve. The carrot Toni dangled in front of him was never fame or trophies but something far more austere: the satisfaction of knowing you had exhausted yourself completely in pursuit of improvement—that there had not been a moment of laziness, distraction, self-pity, or lowered standards. The Sisyphean task Toni set was always expanding, forever just out of reach.
Over time, that mentality became Rafa's identity. His refusal to give up, his capacity to endure pain, his constant search for improvement—all of it seemed rooted in a desire not to disappoint his uncle, the person whose approval mattered most to him as a child.
After understanding Rafa's past, his last season of tennis—disappointing, painful, and heartbreaking as it was—felt like the only possible ending. When your entire being is wrapped up in never giving up, it takes far more than pain to convince you it’s over. The body had to deliver the same message again and again before the mind was finally willing to hear it.
Despite continued issues with his deteriorating left foot, Rafa decided he would play his last professional match at the Davis Cup in November of 2024. Twenty years earlier, he had won a deciding match for the Spanish team, leading them to victory against a formidable U.S. squad. He would leave the way he'd arrived: representing his country in a match that held more value for the team than the individual.
His life is full of these strange symmetries—whether intentional or not, I'll never know. As I stared at a golf-ball-sized knot on the top of his foot, it struck me that the left foot that had ailed him his entire career was the same left foot he'd had to numb to win his last Grand Slam.
In the press conference after losing his match, Rafa gave me pause to think he was as aware of these symmetries as the rest of us, mentioning that he’d lost both the first and last Davis Cup match of his career, using the words "closing the circle."
He ended his last presser as a professional with words no one had ever heard him say before. His entire career, whether in defeat or victory, he'd only ever spoken about finding ways to improve, fighting more, challenging himself to do better. "I've always looked at the negative side. But now there's no point. I'm not going to be hard on myself. I did what I could."
It was the only moment of self-kindness I ever saw from him. I knew some would find the series withholding—but a film that draped Rafa in laurels would have been a film about a man I never met. He had spent his whole life refusing to celebrate himself; the most I could honestly give him was the rare night he stopped keeping score.
I had the story now. But would Rafa like it?
A few days later, I received a voice message from him. He had watched the series, and he had some thoughts.
Thoughts?
There was one important scene he felt was missing, a scene that demonstrated his ability to come back after news of another injury. I assured him, the series contained many versions of that story. That point had landed.
Then came another note. Rafa felt we hadn't included enough of his longtime doctor, Dr. Cotorro, who had guided him through countless injuries over the years. No problem, I said. With only a few weeks before we needed to lock picture, we quickly interviewed the doctor and worked more of his perspective into the series.
Another note. This time about the ending.
Rafa preferred an earlier version, one that ended with him in the pool teaching his son to swim rather than the image of him, teary-eyed, walking away from the chair where he had just delivered his retirement speech. He wanted the final image to point toward the future—the quiet joy of family life—rather than linger on something more emotionally unresolved.
But to me, the image of Rafa leaving that chair carried the emotional truth of the series. Throughout his career, every setback had been followed by another attempt, another return. And for the first time, he wasn't walking toward the next challenge. He was walking away from it.
Unconvinced by my words, Rafa asked me to send him both versions again.
I realized this process was not so different from his retirement itself. Rafa always leaves the door slightly open. Another tournament. Another comeback. Another improvement, still possible. Closing the door completely would mean accepting that it was truly over.
But at the same time, it became clear that the essence of what I had set out to make—the series in all its vulnerability and complexity—had been accepted. Rafa’s notes were surprisingly minor. We were discussing shots, not substance.
Over two years, I watched Rafa place extraordinary trust in coaches, doctors, physios, trainers, and family members. He sought advice constantly, but once he chose a path, he rarely second-guessed the people around him. What surprised me was that he extended the same trust to a filmmaker. In an era when public figures increasingly manage every frame of their own image, Rafa seemed almost uninterested in doing so. He cared deeply about the work. He cared surprisingly little about controlling it.
He said nothing about the sequences involving his dependence on pain medication, or the stomach bleeding it caused. Nothing about the debilitating anxiety that eventually led him to see a psychiatrist. Nothing about the painful rupture with his uncle Toni—how Rafa realized the pressure, the discipline that Toni had instilled was now causing more harm than good. Nothing about the scenes that revealed uncertainty, softness, insecurity—the moments that complicated the mythology of the relentless warrior.
The scenes I worried most about were the ones Rafa seemed least interested in protecting himself from.
In the end, the fact that he trusted the process—that he allowed me to portray not simply the champion, but the person underneath—may have revealed as much about Rafa as the series itself.
Tennis is one of the few sports where you cannot simply run out the clock. No matter the score, someone must win the final point. The match does not end until a player has the confidence to close it.
In some strange way, this felt like match point.
A day later, he called me back. "I watched it again," he said. "I'm fine with it. You are the director. You know best."
It was the first time I had seen Rafa stop fighting.
And, perhaps, make peace with the end.
Zach Heinzerling is an Oscar-nominated documentary filmmaker. His latest, RAFA, is available on Netflix.
