In the wake of Rafael Nadal’s announcement that he will retire from professional tennis, the questions start to formulate. Was this the right way to go? Will next month’s Davis Cup be an appropriate send-off? Didn’t Nadal deserve better than these last two injury-ravaged years?

Well — does it matter?

This final chapter in Nadal’s career has been difficult, but in the fullness of time it will be a footnote. What came before it was one of the most sustained periods of brilliance tennis, or any sport, has ever seen.

Nadal won his first Grand Slam in 2005; he won his 22nd in 2022, 17 years later. The player he vanquished for that final major title, Casper Ruud, had grown up idolising Nadal. He was barely at primary school when the Spaniard won his first French Open title 17 years before they met.

In those 17 years, Nadal won a major in all but three calendar years. For someone with so many injury issues, he was staggeringly consistent and possessed almost unrivalled longevity. And while being forced by injury into announcing his retirement in a sombre video on social media was probably not how Nadal or his supporters had envisaged it, overall he’s doing just fine.

It would have been nice if Nadal had sailed off into the sunset in June with a 15th Roland Garros title, rather than exiting in the first round to Alexander Zverev. It would have been the romantic’s choice for him to win Olympic gold at the same venue a couple of months later, rather than being thumped by Novak Djokovic in the second round.

But however you cut it, there just really shouldn’t be much scope for regret in Nadal’s career. He was a maximiser who overcame chronic injuries and battled with two of the other greatest male players of all time to end up with 22 Grand Slam titles, two more than his great rival Roger Federer and only surpassed on the men’s side by Djokovic, who Nadal helped push to even greater heights.

The depleted state in which things ended may have been sobering, but he held it off for longer than anyone imagined and it lasted for a mercifully short time.

“A career that has been long and more successful than I ever imagined,” as Nadal put it on Thursday in his farewell video.

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If two years is a footnote on Nadal’s career, then it is also the length of a peak for which any tennis player would give their hitting arm. What was so special about Nadal was the number of peaks he had, and how varied they were in nature, if not height.

Rafael Nadal evolved from a master of clay courts to one of the most all-round tennis players in the world. (Manan Vatsayana / AFP via Getty Images)

The breakout years of 2005-09 when he transformed from clay-court specialist to all-conquering master of every surface; the 2010-14 period when he twice won multiple majors in a year (winning three in 2010); the comeback between 2017 and 2020 when he emerged from a couple of barren years to reel off four straight French Opens and two U.S. Open titles; or even the 2022 season when he won the first two majors of the year for the only time and came within a couple of matches at Wimbledon of winning the third as well.

Instead, injury intervened. It often did. That 2022 Wimbledon was Nadal’s last meaningful run at a major. Fresh from taking pain-killing injections to manage a foot injury throughout his last French Open title run, he somehow managed to beat Taylor Fritz in the quarterfinals despite a seven-millimetre tear to his abdominal muscle. That injury ultimately proved too much for Nadal, who had to pull out of his semifinal against Nick Kyrgios.

It was a reminder of how much he would push his body to the limit to chase the success he craved.

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Nadal might wish that he could have hauled his body through that Kyrgios match that never was to earn a crack at Djokovic in the final. He might look back with regret at the 2018 Wimbledon semifinal that he lost against the same player, or the near six-hour Australian Open final in 2012, also against Djokovic, that he came within a couple of games of winning. But regrets, whether about matches or the last two years, should be vanishingly few given everything that Nadal achieved — 92 ATP singles titles in all, as well as four Davis Cup titles and two Olympic gold medals.

Four titles could become five next month, which means that even after 24 months of struggle, a fitting end is maybe exactly what he will find. It was at the Davis Cup 20 years ago that Nadal landed his first really significant victory, helping Spain to the title before he’d won a Grand Slam, or even been to the second week of one.

Rafael Nadal’s victory over Andy Roddick of the U.S.A. at the 2004 Davis Cup clinched his ascension into the tennis firmament. (Cristina Quicler / AFP via Getty Images)

As Nadal said on Thursday: “I think I’ve come full circle, since one of my first great joys as a professional tennis player was the Davis Cup final in Seville in 2004.”

But however he bowed out, it wouldn’t really have mattered. The ending isn’t what matters, what matters is everything that has happened until now. Based on that, he has achieved sporting immortality.

(Top photo: Tim Clayton / Corbis via Getty Images)