Mischa Zverev on Nadal's changes due to fatherhood: "Tennis or family? It’s not easy to combine the two. For me, family has always come first"

Rafael Nadal recently became a father and Mischa Zverev is sure he will need to change how he approaches tennis.

Rafael Nadal recently became a father for the first time in his life and the Spaniard will certainly experience quite a change in his perspective. So far his career has been one of his many priorities in life but all of that becomes secondary now.

Mischa Zverev knows it all too well as he is father of two boys himself:

“Life will change extremely – for the woman, but also for the father. You have to train for two, three hours every morning, then it’s regeneration or fitness. Normally you warm up for half an hour, then you train for two hours, then an hour of regeneration.”

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He added:

“I know this from myself: when you have a child, you also sometimes say: ‘I’ll do regeneration tomorrow and I don’t need to warm up today’. So three and a half hours of training in the morning become two or one and a half.”

Zverev further said:

"You have to think about how you want to approach it, how selfish – even that sounds stupid. Tennis or family? It’s not easy to combine the two. For me, family has always come first. You have to get up at night and help, that’s not ideal before a match. It may be different with Rafa."