Flash Entertainment CEO John Lickrish revealed that he has a good relationship with Rafael Nadal and that the Spaniard once wanted to give him his Richard Mille watch. Flash Entertainment owns the Mubadala World Tennis Championships and Lickrish has once in the past praised Nadal’s jacket and asked if he could have it.
Nadal was a bit surprised by the request, but that started his good relationship. “I’ve been doing this trick to him every year, try anyway,” Lickrish told The National. “The last time I did it with his Richard Mille watch.
I was like, ‘that’s a great watch’ and he was like, ‘yeah you know it’s super light’ I like I wish I had that one and he actually took it off and handed it to me (Lickrish didn’t take it). He would have taken the jacket for me if he had given it to me, really”.
Emma Raducanu and Bencic were expected to meet in the only women’s match at this year’s Mubadala World Tennis Championships. Raducanu tested positive for COVID-19 on Monday and is out of the Mubadala World Tennis Championships.
Lickrish revealed that the plan is to bring more women to the event in the future. “From the beginning we looked at it and thought, ‘how do we get women into the tournament?’ There have been a few different proposals internally that we’ve looked at, also through bringing in a women-only tournament,” Lickrish said.
“I always thought it would be better to combine the two things. First of all, it’s really what we’re doing with the budgets that we have, we’ve decided, and through some of our partners, we’re able to attract women.
I didn’t want to make it unique, I didn’t want to make it corny.
Rafa intends to continue being active
Speaking a bit more about the mental aspect of the sport during the interview, Rafael Nadal philosophized how players sometimes have to fight themselves in addition to their opponents as well.
“All elite sports are complicated and tennis especially being a one-on-one sport. The match is against an opponent who is sometimes better than you, or who is in better shape that day even if it is worse in theory. But the fight is also against oneself and that is a section that sometimes costs a lot.
We have seen it in many cases. It is there, though not only, that mental work is especially important,” he said. “Surely one day I will be an elite ex-athlete, but I will always be an athlete because sport is my passion and I will practice it whenever my body allows me.
And I will always be involved with the structure, which is a project that we started a few years ago and that is gaining more and more strength. I even hope to be able to devote more time to it than I do now since I continue to compete and travel the world,” he concluded.
