“I have never liked the word retirement,” Serena Williams said in an interview with Vogue two years ago. “Maybe the best word to describe what I’m up to is evolution.” Rafael Nadal sounded ready for his next chapter too in a press conference before the Davis Cup Finals in Malaga where he bows out of the game this week. Nadal was far more direct, more ‘blistering forehand down the line’ about the reasons for leaving a sport he’s graced for 23 years.

“It doesn’t make sense to keep going, knowing that I don’t have the real chance to be competitive the way I like to be competitive,” said the 22-time Grand Slam champion. It showed during his 6-4, 6-4 defeat to Botic van de Zandschulp in what could be his last match. Perhaps Mike Tyson might learn a thing or two from that stance although starring on Netflix is not something foreign to the Spaniard either.

Leave them wanting more sounds like the ideal retirement strategy, but tennis is a sport where pulling the kill cord can be an immense challenge. “I get asked about it (retirement) after every single match that I play, every single tournament that I play. I am bored of the question,” Andy Murray said six months before he waved goodbye at the Paris Olympics. The sight of Murray trying to move around Centre Court with his brother Jamie in July was a difficult watch.

The Scot’s case was a long haul of goodbyes, carrying echoes of never really wanting to leave the stage. He was prematurely put out to pasture by the Melbourne organisers when he lost to Roberto Bautista Agut at the 2019 Australian Open.

Alex Auerbach is a performance psychologist and former tennis coach who has worked with elite athletes through the retirement process. He knows how identity can be wedded to the sport.

“People know you as a tennis player first, and because it’s the central feature of your life, most athletes see themselves that way. Leaving that behind requires losing parts of your identity, relationships, and sometimes your perceived value or self-worth. I think that’s particularly true in a sport like tennis where it all depends on YOU. Not your team, or anything else. You become synonymous with the game and your performance.”

In team pursuits, the coach or club tend to eject the player because of contractual or form issues. Tennis is the one individual sport where endurance and longevity is very much up to the player – to a point. For a man who had mixed feelings towards the game, even Andre Agassi claimed that “retiring is like preparing for death.”

Roger Federer’s last chance of a Grand Slam shot was that 2019 Wimbledon showpiece against Novak Djokovic where the Swiss was essentially better on almost every metric that counted. He lost and that was the last chance saloon in the big arenas. His final competitive singles match against Hubert Hurkacz two years later on his favorite SW19 surface was like watching Arnold Palmer shoot an 85. This wasn’t the Federer that the crowd had come to cherish.

Tennis can retire players before they choose. Murray, Federer and Nadal have been beaten by their bodies and not the game. The Swiss knew that he was becalmed after three knee surgeries.

Nadal said it best himself: “OK, I can hold for one more year, but why? To say goodbye in every single tournament, I don’t have that ego to need that.” Murray wanted the relative success of still being able to compete and do damage in majors. Stan Wawrinka is another case of playing on without the expectation of adding to the trophy cabinet. It’s hard to stop if the enjoyment is still there, but the steep stairwell up the rankings means the circle of training relies on ever-decreasing results.

When Rafa Nadal puts down his rackets for the last time, there will be a sequence of sorrow and pin-sharp memories from the past flooding through his mind. The 14-time French Open champion promised that he is in Malaga to do a job and that emotions will only be for the end. The 38-year-old was struggling to keep it all in with the national anthem before the match with the Netherlands.

“Peace can come if you’ve done the work in advance to see yourself more dynamically than ‘just a tennis pro’ and have relationships outside the game that will persist,” said Auerbach. Nadal has managed that one just fine.

As Federer wrote in his retirement note: “To the game of tennis: I love you and will never leave you.” Nadal says he has always been happy without tennis, but the bond to the game is sealed for life.