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Had it crossed his mind that he might never play again, or at least never as wonderfully as before? “If I say not, I would be a liar. You think about everything when you have so much time to think. And the tennis life is very short. But I am really Catholic, and I believe that God knows everything.”

I already had an inkling of his religious faith, having seen him intently cross himself on clinching victory. But now he tells me something I didn’t know, that there is a deeply poignant dimension to his prayers. “I had a sister who died many years ago, and I believe that she protects me from the sky. She was eight years old. It was a car accident in Argentina. I was five or six, so it was much worse for my parents.”