Rafa Looking Ahead

Rafael Nadal has officially turned the page on 2015. Only days into the New Year, he no longer wishes to look back on a year in which he often fell short of his historically high expectations.

“I’m a little bit tired of talking every day about 2015,” he told reporters in Doha, where he’s the No. 2 seed at the Qatar ExxonMobil Open. “We’re in 2016 already, no? We’ve talked enough about 2015. I’ve talked enough about all the things that happened. I’ve been very open talking about all the things that went on during the year. But we’re in 2016, and 2015 is past.”

Nadal, who will open 2016 against fellow Spaniard Pablo Carreno Busta on Tuesday, finished inside the Top 5 in the Emirates ATP Rankings for the 11^th straight year. But for the first time in more than a decade, he came up empty at the majors and failed to add to his record total of 27 ATP World Tour Masters 1000 titles.

“We’re not talking about all the defeats of last year, because that’s past,” Nadal underlined. “What really means something is what’s going on tomorrow. That is the first match for me of the year, and I’m motivated for that. The rest of the things are past experiences for your life: good experiences, bad experiences. I feel lucky that most of the experiences have been very positive.”

The way the left-hander closed out the year — following his stunning upset loss to Italy’s Fabio Fognini at the US Open, he went 16-5 with semi-final showings at the Shanghai Rolex Masters and Barclays ATP World Tour Finals, and finals in both Beijing and Basel — has given him confidence and then some as he looks ahead.

“The expectations are the normal ones, positive ones, because I feel that I finished the past season playing well and I feel that I am playing well again,” he said. “It’s obvious that I feel more confident this year. I finished in a very high position in the rankings. And I finished it playing well, no? This year is another year.”

The off-season, as Nadal explained, was a busy one for the 29-year-old and his uncle/coach, Toni Nadal.

“We worked hard. We worked harder than usual because my physical condition allows me to do it, and that’s important for me,” he said. “I feel that I worked well. Didn’t stop much this year. All my life I worked with the highest intensity possible, but we worked a little bit different. We tried to find different positions on the court, tried to play more inside and we worked a lot on the return, too. We feel that we needed a few things that are different than other years, but at the same time without losing the character of my game.”