Luyat on Nadal: "He's a sensitive person, very human".
Rafael Nadal's retirement will leave a huge void in the tennis world.
The Majorcan, winner of twenty-two Grand Slams in his career, holds a record that will not soon be broken.
With fourteen French Open titles to his name, the king of clay dominated the Porte d'Auteuil tournament for three decades.
Laurent Luyat, a sports journalist for France Télévisions and a great fan of the Spaniard since his early days, has noticed a positive evolution in the general public's opinion of his career.
"The French don't like sportsmen who win all the time. After seven, eight, nine French Opens, they were a bit fed up with Nadal.
And then there was a change in people's minds, after the 2017 Australian Open where he came back and lost in the final to Federer. I really noticed that," he tells 20 Minutes.
"People saw that he wasn't just a physical monster, but someone with an exceptional mind, a fighter who overcame all difficulties.
From that moment on, the general public began to love him enormously. Nadal is a sensitive, very human being.
I confess to a strong attachment to him, and I'm not the only one. Everyone who knows him says so, and the public felt it too at one point.
