He always takes a cold shower before he plays a match. He lines up two water bottles in front of his chair with the brand name facing exactly out. He wears his socks so that the logos on the socks are facing in an exact position. He takes his time before coming out for the coin toss, fiddling with this and that, while his opponent waits at the net.
Before warming up he goes out on the court and sweeps it with his feet along the baseline and the service line (even if it is a hard court and has been already wiped clean by maintenance crew). Before each serve he yanks out his pants in the back, then bounces the ball for up to a minute (in a YouTube video he bounced the ball 76 times before serving).
These are just a few of Rafael Nadal's rituals. People have long been speculating about whether he has OCD, primarily because of his many rituals and superstitions. He is certainly not the first athlete to show signs of obsessive-compulsive disorder, but his rituals are among the most prominent because he plays on center stage in an individual, rather than team, sport where the camera is always on him.
A recent interview by Lynn Barber in NadalNews.com confronted Nadal with the OCD question. Barber began the interview, which took place last summer at the Rome Masters, by asking him why he was continually tugging at his Armani underpants. He replied, "That is something I am doing all my career, something that I cannot control."
She then asked him if he suffered from OCD. He conferred with his PR man before answering. "It is something you start to do that is like a routine. When I do these things it means I am focused, I am competing—it's something I don't need to do but when I do it, it means I'm focused."
Eventually, she got around to asking him about his relationship with his girlfriend, Maria Francisca Perello, noting that he seemed to have more passion for his family than for her.
Nadal calls his family every day but his girlfriend not so often. "She is perfect for me, because she is very relaxed and easy-going and I've known her for a long, long time. Our families have been friends for many years." He treats her almost like an old family member, with a sense of duty, but not of passion.
Asked if he will marry her, Nadal responded with a flat "no." Barber reflected in her article on how routine the relationship with his girlfriend was—it was almost another habit, like yanking out his pants, devoid of any real emotion.
All of these things—the rituals, the superstitions, and the absence of passion in personal relations—are symptoms of OCD. Obsessive-compulsive disorder is an anxiety disorder characterized by uncontrollable, unwanted thoughts (obsessions) and repetitive, ritualized behaviors you feel driven to perform (compulsions). People with OCD, like Nadal, recognize that their obsessive thoughts and compulsive rituals are weird, but they are unable to control them.
Like the Greek myth of Sisiphus doomed to forever pushing a rock up a hill, obsessive-compulsives are forever stuck with their compulsive behavior. For example, they may check the the locks on their doors ten times to make sure they're all locked, wash their hands forty times a day, or tug at their underpants continuously throughout a tennis match.
As Nadal noted about the pants tugging: "That is … something I cannot control."
As I write this, Nadal was just defeated by Djokovic in the finals of the Australian Open. This is his seventh defeat by Djokovic in a row. Although the match went to five sets this time, I wonder, as do many others, how his apparent OCD will affect the rest of his season. Will his rituals, his attention to minute details, bring him back to the top again, or will it be a hindrance?
In order for a person with OCD to function, not only his water bottles have to be in order, but his life in general. When all his ducks are lined up, he can perform at maximum strength; if one duck is out of place, it can be devastating. When Nadal's parents split up a few years ago, he went through a period where his tennis game fell off. He was obsessing not about his pants, but his parents. He seemed to go into a depression that lasted a few months.
As a psychoanalyst, I have become aware of how obsessives are control freaks and they want to control everything in their lives; when Nadal couldn't control his parent's marriage, when he couldn't ensure the stability of his family, his own feeling of well-being took a hit. He spent endless hours of cogitation about it, and ended up losing his favorite tournament, the French Open.
If he has injuries, he obsesses about his injuries. If the tennis season is too long (11 months), he obsesses about that. If he loses, he obsesses about losing. Last year, he began losing to Novak Djokovic, and he appeared to get into a morose mood. After his fifth defeat by Djokovic, he commented in an interview, "When one player beat you five times, (it's) because today my game don't bother him a lot. Probably, the mental part is little bit dangerous for me."
Ah, yes, the mental part. That is the crux of his tennis world. Can he use his OCD to strengthen his confidence and his resolve, or will the OCD undermine both? Will his mind exert healthy control over the matter of his body and his tennis, or will mind become too strict and foreboding?
Let us hope he can keep all of his ducks in a row.
Gerald Schoenewolf, Ph.D., licensed psychoanalyst, professor of psychology and author of 20 books, is also an avid sports fan.
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