Patrick McEnroe, Former Professional Tennis Player:

We were all lucky enough to be blessed to watch him.

And I think, to me, Stephanie, it was the fact that Rafael Nadal, as you said, was one of the most intense competitors, maybe the most intense competitor, that the sport of tennis has ever seen, arguably one of the greatest athletes that we have ever seen.

But I think it was his demeanor off the court and the fact that he was so humble. When he talked about his game and he talked about the moment, you really felt that what he said was so true, when he talked about he wanted to be in the fight. He wanted to work hard. It wasn’t just about the wins and losses.

And a lot of athletes say that, but you don’t really believe it. But with Nadal, I really believe it, that he just loved the fight. He loved the competition. Of course, he loved to win. But he always had a saying, Stephanie. He used to say: “I have to be willing to suffer when I go out on the court.’

Now, he suffered physically over the years. But, of course, he made a lot of his opponents suffer in another way, particularly on that red clay where he was just basically unbeatable for years and years. And I saw him for the first time in a competitive match in the Davis Cup final when I was the captain for the U.S. We were playing in Seville in a soccer stadium in the final.

And they put in this young teenager. And we thought to ourselves, oh, maybe we have got a shot. This is before he’d won the French. Maybe we could beat this guy. And when I saw him beat Andy Roddick in that Davis Cup match in front of the home crowd of 35,000 people, I thought, wow, this guy is different. And he sure turned out to be very different.