TIMEの流れを絶やすな -3-

全仏オープンの開幕に合わせて、Timeはナダルを取り上げていましたね。

Rafael Nadal’s High Aces
Sean Gregory/Monte Carlo @seanmgregory May 22, 2014
The world’s top ranked player is chasing tennis history—and trying his hand at high-stakes poker. Will his body--and his luck--hold out?

10年近く前からナダルのアグレッシブなプレーを見て、こんな激しいプレースタイルなので短命の選手に終るのではと思っていました。この記事でもその点に触れていました。

Come again? Rafael Nadal, one of the most maniacally intense athletes on the planet, famous for pounding his body on every point, lacks aggression? Well, if anyone can learn how to ramp things up–in poker or go fish or any other game–it’s Nadal. From the moment he burst onto the global sporting scene, winning the 2005 French Open at age 19, pundits wondered how long the hard-driving Spaniard could last. His perpetual snarl–Nadal plays with a chip on his face–expressed a manic drive that was sure to wear him down over time, some analysts said. Rafa would just be a passionate flash.

“All my career, I’ve been listening to that song,” Nadal tells TIME while lounging in the corner of the casino after the poker game. “That I will not have a long career because my movements are too aggressive.”
But here we are, nearly a decade and 12 more Grand Slam victories later, and Nadal is still No. 1 in the world. No less an authority than Andre Agassi recently called him the greatest player of all time.

今回の記事で初めて知ったのはナダルがポーカーにはまっていることでした。その共通点とは。。。

Tennis and poker, it turns out, are complementary, each reinforcing mental habits needed to succeed in the other. “One big thing is concentration,” says Rebecca Symes, a U.K.-based sports psychologist. “Tennis is an individual sport, which means you’re trying to be in control all the time, which is actually quite similar in poker.” Then there’s the matter of coping with dumb luck. In tennis it may be an umpire’s bad call, a freak gust of wind; in poker you can calculate all the probabilities and make the right decision, but the cards often move against you. “One of the biggest things in poker is not letting swings get to you,” says James Blake, a retired American tennis pro and poker enthusiast who believes the card game helped him remain steady and focused on the court. Uncle Toni doesn’t disagree. “In poker, always there is tension,” he says. “It’s the same in sport.”

上記のNadalの動画を見て、一瞬スペイン語でも話しているのかと思ったら英語でした。あのような英語をTimeはNadal says in his sometimes fractured Englishと表現しています。

With the French Open looming, however, Nadal’s focus is on his court game. The knee remains a problem. “I’m still having pain a lot of days,” Nadal says in his sometimes fractured English. “The only thing I wish is that the pain is only minding me when I’m competing. Because I really like to enjoy the rest of the time of my life.” If there are people who question Nadal’s chances of catching Federer’s Grand Slam record, count Nadal among them. “I doubt about myself,” Nadal says. “I think the doubts are good in life. The people who don’t have doubts I think only two things–arrogance or not intelligence.”

それにしても最後にある“I think the doubts are good in life. The people who don’t have doubts I think only two things–arrogance or not intelligence.”（疑いは人生には良いことでしょう。疑いを持たない人は、傲慢か知的でないかのどちらかだと思います）はかっこいい言葉ですね。

ナダルで思い出すのは錦織君との熱戦です。フレンチオープンでも注目をされていて動画で取り上げられていたのに残念です。けがを直してコートに戻ってきて欲しいですね。