"We're always pulling each other's leg"

Here is a man who can get Rafael Nadal to do push-ups in a hotel lobby, walk around in his underwear or play while running a fever. Here is a man with a perennial smile on his face, gifted hands for tennis and a deep friendship with the winner of Roland Garros 2011. This is Marc López, an élite doubles player, the travel and training companion of the winner of 10 Grand Slams, and often also his companion on and off the court, whether on vacation in Bangkok, or holding a racket or a PlayStation joystick in his hand. Through López, we get to see a different, more relaxed Nadal - the joker that López met years ago, when they shared a hotel room when they were competing in teams in Barcelona.

"That's where it all started, in that room," says López, 28, who goes by the nickname of El Boleta. "Neither one of us is exactly very neat. Rafa is the restless type, he's always thinking about doing things. He's not the kind to spend three hours in the same place. We didn't spend a lot of time in the room, just playing with the PlayStation. He makes you laugh a lot because he cracks jokes. Since we're friends, we say silly things to each other, things we're not really serious about, we pull each other's leg."

For instance, López will say: "Look at Roger Federer, how well he plays, now there's the real number one." And Nadal? "He just laughs. During training sessions, we set each other challenges. The loser gets a slap on the back of the neck, or has to do push-ups wherever the winner says, like in the middle of the dining hall."

López and Nadal often go on trips together during the year, and they often share a room when the champion has been eliminated. To them it's natural. These tight bonds create peculiar situations, such as the day when they both showed up in the lobby of a hotel in downtown Paris in their underwear in the middle of the night, and started doing push-ups. Another time, one of them had to do the same thing in front of a bunch of tourists at the Crown Hotel in Melbourne, Australia.

López, who admires the way his friend has dealt with success, has his own theory: "Everything Rafa does, and I mean everything, he does with complete concentration, 100 percent - golf, PlayStation, he doesn't know how to do anything without giving it his all."

Nadal the tennis player, say his friends, disappears once the tournaments are over. Then he becomes just another member of the group, somebody "we can fool around with." Somebody "who makes you feel real good, even though to some people he may be God." Nadal, it appears, even organizes vacations for the entire group of friends.

"Every year he rents a boat to spend a few days with eight or 10 friends," says López. "In 2009, we went to Cannes, and other years we went to Ibiza, Menorca.But no partying. It's all about fishing, playing soccer and little else. He is very generous, he pays for everything. Later when we go out to dinner, the rest of the friends pool our money and treat him, because it's the least we can do: the boat, the accomdations, they are free for us. Last year, we went to Thailand for a week."