Rafael Nadal will join Carlos Alcaraz in the Netflix tennis documentary rush. The streaming giant is producing a documentary series based on Nadal’s 2024 season, his last before retiring from tennis at the Davis Cup.
Directed by Zach Heinzerling and produced by Skydance Sports, it is the latest in a clutch of post-retirement tennis media promising “unprecedented access” to elite athletes — on the implied basis that they are at least somewhat in control of what that access reveals.
Netflix executives say the series, as yet untitled and without a proposed air date, will offer “an intimate glimpse into his (Nadal’s) journey to cement his legacy.”
Nadal’s final year on tour ended with defeat to Botic Van de Zandschulp of the Netherlands at the Davis Cup, and included a final match against long-time rival Novak Djokovic at the 2024 Paris Olympics which Nadal also lost.
A series of persistent injuries prevented a concerted comeback, though he managed to say emotional farewells to the Barcelona Open, Italian Open in Rome, Madrid Open and French Open, where he lost to Alexander Zverev in three sets after receiving perhaps the most difficult possible first-round draw available.
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But the documentary will also “show how my life and my tennis career developed through the years,” Nadal said in a statement. That defeat to Zverev at Roland Garros in Paris was only his fourth in 116 matches at the Grand Slam tournament that brought 14 of his 22 major titles.
Nadal’s emergence in the early 2000s and subsequent rivalry with Roger Federer and then Novak Djokovic defined men’s tennis for two decades and, alongside the dominance of the Williams sisters catapulted the sport into the global cultural firmament.
Its contemporary place in the popular imagination has received further boosts from the watchability and prominence of Jannik Sinner, Carlos Alcaraz, Coco Gauff, Naomi Osaka and Iga Swiatek, as well as “Challengers,” the Zendaya movie released earlier in 2024. But Netflix’s tennis documentary, “Break Point,” was pulled after two seasons of disappointing viewing figures.
Those top stars did not comply with offering up access that they could not use as their own intellectual property; the series itself failed to circumvent that by turning lesser-known top players into exciting personalities in the way that “Drive to Survive,” the Formula One equivalent, did so well.
As tennis media approaches a crossroads with so many of its former stars calling it quits, Netflix will now hope that Nadal and Alcaraz — whose own series, “My Way,” is slated for 2025, can turn things around.
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(Miguel Medina / AFP via Getty Images)
