Toni Nadal

Antonio "Toni" Nadal Homar (Spanish pronunciation: [anˈtonjo ˈtoni naˈðal oˈmaɾ]; born 21 February 1961) is a Spanish tennis coach. Toni Nadal is the uncle and ex-coach of tennis player Rafael Nadal, the ex-coach of tennis player Félix Auger-Aliassime, and the elder brother of Spanish professional footballer Miguel Ángel Nadal. With 16 major titles won as the coach of his nephew Rafael Nadal, he was the most successful coach in tennis history until Marián Vajda and his player Novak Djokovic won their 17th major title together in 2020.

Toni Nadal was born into a Spanish family and has two siblings, brothers. His younger brother Miguel became a professional football player for FC Barcelona. Toni Nadal tried participating in several sports including football, table tennis, and swimming. He achieved the title of junior champion of Balearic Islands in his table tennis career. He was the first of his siblings to play ground tennis when he started doing so at fourteen years old. Nadal was inspired to join the sport when he saw Ilie Năstase win the Barcelona Masters in 1972.

Toni Nadal worked as a tennis coach and as a manager for a tennis club. He obtained a trainer's degree and taught at the tennis club his brother Miguel was a member of in Manacor. Toni also became a manager of the Manacor tennis club while teaching younger students. At this time, Toni began coaching his nephew, Rafa Nadal. The majority of Toni Nadal's coaching career has been spent with Rafael.

In April 2021, Toni joined the coaching team of Canadian Félix Auger-Aliassime ahead of the clay-court season. However, Toni did not travel with Félix full-time, remaining the director of the Rafa Nadal Academy by Movistar. He split with Auger-Aliassime in 2024.

Toni Nadal has described his coaching style as 'hard', saying that he occasionally puts too much pressure on Rafa, but that he does so because he wants him to succeed. When Rafa was younger, he would be nervous of having lessons by himself with Uncle Toni. Rafa stated that as a child he would sometimes return home from tennis lessons crying. Toni Nadal feels being such a hard coach would make his pupils better tennis players.

Toni required that his pupils show respect for their equipment, and stated that he would immediately stop coaching Rafa if he ever threw his racket out of frustration. Toni believes that throwing a tennis racket showed a lack of respect towards people who could not afford the same equipment and the sport itself.

Toni strives to teach players to be responsible for themselves. He trained Rafa on poor tennis courts with old tennis balls to show that it was not the equipment that would decide if he won or lost. He believed that losing was a fact of competing in sports and that the only one responsible for winning or losing was the player.

Toni had an authoritarian attitude with the players that he coached. He wanted his opinions to be important to players he was coaching rather than it just being advice. He did not want to be paid by Rafa because he believed that it would make him less of an important figure. Without being paid, he could say whatever he felt without a chance of Rafa being able to fire him like a regular coach.