Rafael Nadal: ‘I hope to be able to devote more time to it than…’
Flash Entertainment CEO John Lickrish revealed that he has a good relationship with Rafael Nadal and that the Spaniard once wanted to give him his Richard Mille watch. Flash Entertainment owns the Mubadala World Tennis Championships and Lickrish has once in the past praised Nadal’s jacket and asked if he could have it.
Nadal was a bit surprised by the request, but that started his good relationship. “I’ve been doing this trick to him every year, try anyway,” Lickrish told The National. “The last time I did it with his Richard Mille watch.
I was like, ‘that’s a great watch’ and he was like, ‘yeah you know it’s super light’ I like I wish I had that one and he actually took it off and handed it to me (Lickrish didn’t take it). He would have taken the jacket for me if he had given it to me, really”.
Emma Raducanu and Bencic were expected to meet in the only women’s match at this year’s Mubadala World Tennis Championships. Raducanu tested positive for COVID-19 on Monday and is out of the Mubadala World Tennis Championships.
Lickrish revealed that the plan is to bring more women to the event in the future. “From the beginning we looked at it and thought, ‘how do we get women into the tournament?’ There have been a few different proposals internally that we’ve looked at, also through bringing in a women-only tournament,” Lickrish said.
“I always thought it would be better to combine the two things. First of all, it’s really what we’re doing with the budgets that we have, we’ve decided, and through some of our partners, we’re able to attract women.
I didn’t want to make it unique, I didn’t want to make it corny.
Rafa intends to continue being active
Speaking a bit more about the mental aspect of the sport during the interview, Rafael Nadal philosophized how players sometimes have to fight themselves in addition to their opponents as well.
“All elite sports are complicated and tennis especially being a one-on-one …