Rafael Nadal: “I Don’t Know if I am Righty or Lefty”

Rafael Nadal, for those who do not know, is a right-handed person. However, he plays tennis with his left hand. Such people who have the capability to use both their hands to equally good effect, are known as, again for those who do not know-ambidextrous. Nadal was asked if he could call himself a right-handed or left-handed person.

“I don’t know if I am righty or lefty”, says Nadal. “That is the true. Because is sometimes really strange. I don’t have anything of feeling with the left, because if I have to give you that with the left, I don’t know, I have no feeling. With this I gonna have all the feeling.”

Rafa says he has never even tried playing tennis seriously with his right hand. “To play tennis, well, I never tried with the right. I didn’t have feeling, and with the left, seems like it worked well the last couple of years. (Laughs.) It’s difficult to imagine that I can be as good as I was these couple of years or all my career with the right.’

Nadal also revealed that at a very young age he used to play a double-handed backhand as well as a doubled-handed forehand.  “I played two hands, backhand, two hands forehand, when I was a kid, because I start when I was really small and I didn’t have enough power to play with one hand. I played two backhands because I changed the grip”, said the Spaniard.

Most of us were under the impression, that it was his uncle Toni Nadal, who instructed Rafa to play with his left. However, Nadal said it was untrue. “Toni never said, You should be played right handed”, said Rafa. “That’s sometimes the history, but that’s press says. That’s not the right history. So one day at 10 years old, Toni says, well, if you watch on the TV, you are gonna see a lot of very good players play two hands both shots, no, backhand and forehand. So we had to change and play with one hand, and naturally comes the left, so I play with left.