Tennis Star | Humanitarian • Rafael Nadal Rolls Sleeves Up For Good In Mallorca Flood Clean-Up Efforts

By: Thomas Cluck

While the rest of the top men’s tennis players are continuing their seasons in Asia with the ATP Masters 1000 in Shanghai this week, world number one Rafael Nadal is using his time off with a knee injury for good. When crisis ensued and help was needed, Nadal, long lauded as one of the most generous and humble top athletes in the world, went to work, leading clean-up efforts after the horrific flooding and mudslides hit his native island of Mallorca earlier this week.

A native and current resident of Manacor, a coastal town on the largest of Spain’s Balearic Islands, the 32 year-old Nadal immediately went to help assist recover and clean-up efforts in the flash flood-ravaged city of Sant Llorenç des Cardassar, a town that has already lost ten lives due to the devastation of the rains and floods. As anyone knowing Nadal and his character and commitment to the island would expect, he was right at work. The world’s best tennis player may have 17 Grand Slam titles and countless amounts of success and riches, but when his island needed him, he stepped up, rolled his sleeves up, and got dirty as the going got tough. Knowing Nadal, who would expect any less?

The Spanish superstar also opened up the doors of his Manacor-based Rafa Nadal Tennis Academy to those damaged and displaced by the flooding. The world number one is currently rehabbing from a knee injury sustained at the U.S. Open, one that would force him to retire in the semifinals of the year’s final major to Juan Martin del Potro. Nadal is slated to return to the ATP World Tour in less than a month’s time at the final Masters 1000 of the season in Bercy at the Paris Rolex Masters.