Rafael Nadal paid a touching tribute to Novak Djokovic, Roger Federer, and Andy Murray during his emotional retirement ceremony at the French Open on Sunday.<\/p>\n
Djokovic, Federer, and Murray received a raptuous reception as they stepped onto Court Philippe Chatrier to pay tribute to Nadal<\/a>, seven months on from the final match of his career.<\/p>\n \u2018King of Clay\u2019 Nadal was visibly emotional throughout his ceremony at Roland Garros<\/a>, where he won 14 of his 22 Grand Slam singles titles.<\/p>\n It was the event that came to define the Spaniard\u2019s career, with the 38-year-old winning an incredible 112 matches at the tournament, losing just four times.<\/p>\n Nadal and his \u2018Big Four\u2019 rivals helped redefine dominance in the men\u2019s game, with 69 Grand Slam titles between them, and the Spaniard celebrated his greatest rivals with a poignant message on court.<\/p>\n Rafael Nadal will always have one title Novak Djokovic can never take from him<\/a><\/p>\n How Novak Djokovic broke a Rafael Nadal record with his 100th career title<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cAfter all these years fighting for everything it\u2019s unbelievable how the time changes perspective of everything. You don\u2019t know yet Novak, probably you know already Andy. With Roger we have talked about it a couple times.<\/p>\n \u201cAll of the nerves, pressure, strange feelings you feel when we see each other when we are rivals, it\u2019s completely different when you finish your career. At the end, now, it\u2019s all about being happy about everything that we achieved.<\/p>\n \u201cAt the end, all of us achieved our dreams. We became tennis players, played in the most important stages of our careers. I think we built amazing rivalries, but at the same time in a good way.<\/p>\n \u201cWe showed the world that we can fight as hard as possible, but being good colleagues and respect each other very well. And for me, it means a lot that you are all here.<\/p>\n \u201cYou gave me some hard times on court honestly, but I really enjoyed pushing myself to the limit every single day to compete with all of you.<\/p>\n \u201cAt the end tennis is just a game. Sometimes we feel a bit more. But we understand at the end of the day, it\u2019s really only a game. What it means for me that all of you are here is everything.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a great message to the world that we can be good friends even if we had the best rivalries. Thank you very very much for everything during all these years.<\/p>\n \u201cI really hope and I\u2019m sure we will continue doing positive things for our sport. Our legacy is there, but we need to keep building things that helps tennis keep growing. I\u2019m sure we will make beautiful things together.<\/p>\n \u201cThank you very much for everything. And all the best.\u201d<\/p>\n Read Next<\/strong>:\u00a0Rafael Nadal\u2019s greatest French Open milestones ahead of official farewell<\/a><\/p>\n The post Rafael Nadal\u2019s full message to \u2018Big 4\u2019 rivals amid emotional French Open farewell<\/a> appeared first on Tennis365<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Rafael Nadal paid a touching tribute to Novak Djokovic, Roger Federer, and Andy Murray during his emotional retirement ceremony at the French Open on Sunday. Djokovic, Federer, and Murray received a raptuous reception as they stepped onto Court Philippe Chatrier to pay tribute to Nadal, seven months on from the final match of his career. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-504","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/504","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=504"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/504\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=504"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=504"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=504"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Tennis News<\/h2>\n
Nadal\u2019s speech<\/h4>\n