MADRID – When Iga Swiatek appeared this Monday through the VIP area of the Madrid Masters 1000 to sit in front of the media, she was very aware that there was a question she was going to have to answer no matter what. And it did not take long to come out: “How were the training sessions with ‘Rafa’?”
That ‘Rafa’ is Rafael Nadal, the lifelong idol of the Polish tennis player. The Spanish former tennis player, retired in 2024, has been quite attentive these last few weeks to Swiatek’s preparation for the clay season. The world number four and champion of six Grand Slams recently broke up with coach Wim Fissette after a bad streak of results and signed for her bench Francis Roig, one of the men who has accompanied Nadal in practically all of his career. The images of Swiatek exercising at the Rafa Nadal Academy under the attentive gaze of the owner went around the world.
“I got very tense during the first 15 minutes of the training. I was like ‘My God, how should I play? He is there watching…’,” Swiatek responded to journalists at the Caja Mágica. “We talked a lot about his experiences and, sometimes, about what I had to work on and adjust. He also transmitted a lot of calm to me, especially after the last matches, reminding me that I should focus on the long term. He helped me have perspective.”
Rafa teaching Iga the secret to his iconic buggy whip forehand at the @rnadalacademy 😍#swiatek #nadal pic.twitter.com/FeRlTowwBm
— Lukasinho (@LukasFCB321) April 6, 2026
Swiatek, 24 years old, is going through one of the most delicate moments of her career. After conquering Seoul in September 2025, the Pole has not lifted a title again. This year, in fact, she has not surpassed the quarter-final round in any tournament. Now comes the clay, her favorite surface, the moment to take off. And with the help of Nadal. “He is a quite relaxed coach. He did not shout at me, but rather motivated me in a positive way. He was relaxed but strict at the same time. It is Rafa Nadal. It doesn’t matter what he says, you are going to do it one hundred percent. Just with his presence he already did his job,” Swiatek elaborated on that relationship a week ago at the Stuttgart tournament.
“Rafa has it easier to be able to be a very good coach”
It is still too early to analyze the Swiatek-Nadal association, but seeing those two names together, 4 Roland Garros one and 14 the other, instills some fear within the circuit. “This is bad for everyone… This should be illegal,” recently pointed out Jessica Pegula, number five in the WTA ranking, on the Player’s Box podcast, the same microphone where her teammate Madison Keys spoke out. “The last thing we needed with Iga on clay is for her to have Rafa.”
The images of Nadal giving advice to Swiatek open a question mark: Will the Spaniard take that step and become a coach? The answer right now seems to have a “no” for an answer: being a coach implies a lot of sacrifice, traveling many weeks, and returning to a life from hotel to hotel that Nadal seems to have left behind.
“Rafa right now has a life where he is doing things all day, he has a lot of demand for everything, and I think that even so he finds time to get involved with the players of the academy,” Martín Landaluce, who trains in Manacor, told CLAY. “I personally have lived it in training sessions in which he has stopped by and tried to give me certain advice, and it is valued a lot because he is a person who has many things to do. That he keeps finding moments to be with us is important. I value it a lot.”
“I sincerely do not believe that being a coach is his objective today; I don’t see him traveling the circuit,” Tommy Robredo, current director of the ATP 500 Barcelona, indicated to CLAY. The former number five in the ATP ranking is clear, however, that Nadal would be a very good coach.
“Do all former tennis players understand a lot about tennis? Yes. Are all former tennis players good communicators? No. To be a very good coach, what you have to do is be the best coach for that person. But for another player, you are going to have to do it differently. So, if you are capable of adapting, if you are capable of being able to express well what you want to transmit and that the other person catches it, you are going to be a good coach,” explained Tommy Robredo. “No doubt that a player like Rafa, who has been so, so good mentally and physically and who has so much background, has it easier to be able to be a very good coach.”
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Fernando Vicente, who has spent many years on Andrey Rublev’s bench, goes along the same line as Robredo and adds an extra point: the respect that a tennis player like Nadal instills. “That you are a former player of great renown is not going to make your player suddenly play better or worse. You can give advice, give variations… But it is a slow process. That said, if you are very crazy and a Federer or a Nadal trains you, well maybe you don’t do certain crazy things in front of him just so he doesn’t see you. In that sense, his mere presence is going to help you,” explained to CLAY Vicente, number 29 in the ranking in the year 2000.
“It is clear that it is a stroke of luck that Rafa can give you some advice. Furthermore, Iga is a very nervous girl. I see her in tournaments and I see her very mechanical, so if Rafa gives you some advice and you are capable of understanding them and adjusting them to your game, it seems to me that it could suit her very well.”
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