SPORTING prowess may run in the DNA if Rafael Nadal's young cousins are any indication: Joan and Toni Junior have just won their first International Tennis Federation (ITF) qualifiers as professionals.
Rafa's cousin Joan Nadal makes his professional début aged 16 (photo: Ariel Fernández on Twitter, @AFD7L)
Their dad, Toni Nadal, is Rafa's uncle and was his coach until 2017, when he decided to focus more on the current world number 2's eponymous sports academy, bringing on stars of the future.
Under the guidance of Toni Senior, now 59, Rafa won 13 Grand Slams, and has gone on to net another seven since, including his 13th French Open title at Paris' Roland Garros stadium.
Clearly, the apple has not fallen far from the tree: Toni Junior, who is just 17 – the same age his famous cousin was when he met his wife, Mery Perelló, and two years younger than Rafa was when he clinched his first Roland Garros trophy – scooped up his first-ever ITF victory in straight sets against Lennart Melzer in the Manacor M15 qualifier, and in the next round, will be up against Oleg Prihodko.
His younger brother Joan, aged 16, faced one of the top 700 ATP players, Russia's Denis Klok, and dispatched him in three sets.
After this somewhat gruelling match, his next rival will be Peter Benjamin Privara, from Slovakia.
They each still need to win two more matches if they want to get into the main draw for the M15 tournament at the Rafael Nadal Academy in the family's native town of Manacor, Mallorca.
Joan's first match as a professional was at his elder cousin's sports school, against Turkey's Kuzey Cekirge, although the recent ITF round against Klok was his first win at this level.
Toni Junior, 17 (in red) and Joan, 16 (in blue) show the apple has not fallen far from the tree as they become the ones to watch - will they follow in cousin Rafael's footsteps? (Photo: José Morgado on Twitter, @josemorgado)
Toni Senior and Rafael were on good terms when they parted company as trainer and pupil – the decision came from the former, who felt his skills were better channelled into up-and-coming children and teenagers, giving him more scope to develop them, than into an already-established world-class player at his peak, whom he felt would benefit from a coach of a different calibre.
But Toni Senior can still claim a sizeable share of the credit for how Rafa turned out, both personally and professionally – his nephew's dogged determination, almost masochistic perfectionism, humble character and enormous sportsmanship did the rest in turning his talent into global stardom and putting him into the ATP number one slot in three different decades.
One little-known fact about the Nadal family is that they have been proven to reach dizzy heights in sports other than tennis: Another of Rafa's uncles, Miguel Ángel Nadal, played for FC Barcelona as a professional and won 62 caps for his country.
Rafa himself is also said to share a passion for watersports with wife Mery, whom he wedded in October 2019, a year and a half after proposing to her and having been each others' only partners since their teens.
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