The world of tennis has recently lost some icons of the last 20 years to retirement.
Rafael Nadal, one of the greatest players to ever step on a court and the best to step on clay, retired after winning 22 grand slam titles in November 2024.
But what is tennis’ loss could be golf’s gain. It has never been a secret that Nadal loves golf. Not only that, but he loves playing it to a very good standard.
Nadal is a scratch player and seems to have been at this level for some time. Back in February 2024, he won the Men’s Scratch title at the Balearic Mid-Amateur Championship. He didn’t just win either, he won by seven shots with a score of 147. Below is a video of the much-talked-about Rafael Nadal golf swing. Swing it your way, as they say.
His participation in the Balearic Mid-Amateur Championship has become a regular fixture in the last four years. Nadal beat 75 players too, during a period when he was recovering from an injury and away from the tennis court.
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Rafael Nadal golf interest mirrored by other tennis stars
Now with unlimited time, Nadal is a world-class athlete who is already near a professional standard of the game. The possibilities are endless and exciting as to what he could achieve.
His compatriot and fellow tennis star Carlos Alcaraz also has a passion for golf and uses the sport as a way of disconnecting from the pressures of the hard-court arena. “We talked a lot about how much – how good is golf for us, for our mind just to disconnect, just to turn off our minds, just to be better, you know, on the court, just to be better on the tournaments,” he said about playing with his Norwegian contemporary and rival Casper Ruud.
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And then, of course, we have Andy Murray, who is on his own quest to reach the handicap mark of 0. The three-time grand slam champion made his intentions in the game clear – he wants to get good, and he started in promising fashion by playing with Scottish Open champion Bob MacIntyre at the 2024 BMW PGA Championship Pro-Am.
“It’s a different sort of nerves. Different sort of nerves because you are comfortable in the sort of tennis environment. I’m not thinking I’m going to walk out on the tennis court and forget how to hit the ball,” he said when he was asked what the pressure of playing tennis in front of a crowd was like compared with golf.
“You just, you want to perform well. Whereas here, you’re sort of nervous about — there’s people standing like five metres away from where I’m driving, and I’m like, I’m useless at this game.”
We saw some magical showdowns between Nadal and Murray on the court over the years. Who would object to a few more battles between this pair on the celebrity golf scene?
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