By Richard Pagliaro | Thursday, September 24, 2026
Photograph credit score: Rafa Nadal Academy
Childhood rivals will reunite for the Rafa Nadal Academy Slam subsequent month.
Richard Gasquet has been named as the primary member of the crew that Rafa Nadal will captain on the Rafa Nadal Academy Slam, the exhibition occasion to be held on October third in Manacor, Mallorca at 4:30 p.m. native time as a part of the Rafa Nadal Academy’s tenth Anniversary celebrations.
Gasquet shall be a part of Crew Rafa, which can tackle Crew Murray, captained by Andy Murray, in a really particular exhibition occasion that can reconvene among the sport’s greatest stars to have a good time 10 years of the Academy.
The Gasquet-Nadal reunion places the Frenchman’s wondrous one-handed backhand on the identical squad as Nadal’s twisting topspin forehand, broadly considered one of the vital harmful forehands in Open Period historical past.
Each gamers have been acknowledged as distinctive skills of their technology from a really younger age, and their paths started to cross lengthy earlier than they reached the skilled tour.
A type of early encounters got here at Les Petits As, the place Rafa Nadal and Richard Gasquet confronted one another after they have been each 12 years previous. It was one of many first occasions their paths crossed on a tennis court docket, lengthy earlier than they might go on to compete alongside one another for greater than twenty years on the greatest tournaments in world tennis.
On Saturday, October third, Nadal and Gasquet will share the court docket as soon as once more, this time as teammates on Crew Rafa for the Rafa Nadal Academy Slam.
