A passage from the Rudyard Kipling poem “If” is written on the wall of the players’ entrance to Wimbledon’s Centre Court. “If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster and treat those two imposters both the same,” it reads. Competitors can glance at Kipling’s writing before they take to the London grass. 

To American tennis legend Chris Evert, these words encapsulate the spirit of Rafael Nadal, the Spanish star who has spent the last two decades thrilling his legions of admirers around the world, but announced his impending retirement from tennis on Thursday.   

“That’s him, to a T,” Evert tells TIME. Nadal did have a knack for swatting down on-court obstacles with muscle and grit: his snarl belied an inner calm that, more often than not, triumphed. “Have you ever seen him break a racquet?” says Evert. “Have you ever seen him scream and shout at his coaching box? If he lost, he would give compliments. He wouldn’t make excuses.” Of the three all-time men’s players who’ve dominated this era of the game—Nadal, Roger Federer and Novak Djokovic—Nadal seemed to be the most bashful of the three. He relished winning, but not the adoration. He exuded the most humility.

“In the sports world, there seems to be controversy and there seems to be anger, and it’s not always so nice,” says Evert. “He was like a bright light. He always brought order to the chaos. There will be a gaping hole.”  

Nadal, 38, had been hinting at retirement all year. Injuries were taking their toll; he played in only one major, the French Open, in 2024, and lost in the first round of the tournament he’s won an incredible 14 times. He could have stuck around another year and received a send-off at each of the Slam tournaments one last time. But Nadal needed no pro forma retirement tour. Waving to the crowds and losing in the second round didn’t hold much appeal.

Instead, he’ll go out on his own terms: after the Davis Cup Final 8, held in Malaga, Spain, starting Nov. 19. Nadal will try to help his nation win the Davis Cup title for the fifth time in his illustrious career. 

He’ll step aside with 22 major championship titles, good for second all-time on the men’s side; he trails only Djokovic, who owns 24. He’s unquestionably the greatest clay-court player of all-time: a Nadal statue was unveiled at Roland-Garros in Paris in 2021, while he was still competing in tournaments. He won his final major, at Roland-Garros, appropriately, a year later.

Evert won seven French Open titles herself. “I would pat myself on the back,” she says, “until Nadal came along.” 

Patrick McEnroe, the ESPN commentator and former U.S. Davis Cup captain, remembers watching the 2019 French Open final from Roland-Garros: Nadal’s opponent, Dominic Thiem of Austria, was having a strong season, having won the Indian Wells tournament on hard court that year and also taken the Barcelona Open title on clay about a month before the French. But after they split the first two sets, Nadal crushed Thiem in the third and fourth, 6-1, 6-1. “For Thiem to win a point was like a monumental effort,” says McEnroe. “Nadal’s ability to take the ball on the rise, take it early, and also play that typical clay-court defensive kind of game—he could do everything. Nobody ever played this aggressively.”

Nadal won his first French Open in 2005, at the age of 19, while wearing white Capri pants. He then took the next three Roland-Garros titles, before casting aside any speculation he’d be a clay-only specialist with his unforgettable breakthrough at the 2008 Wimbledon final, when he took down Federer, who had won the previous five Wimbledon championships. Nadal won the five-set match, which was played out over nearly seven hours due to a pair of rain delays and concluded with darkness fast descending on Centre Court, 6-4, 6-4, 6-7 (5-7), 6-7 (8-10), 9-7. It was probably the greatest tennis match ever played. “That catapulted Nadal from being a great player to a legendary player,” says McEnroe. He’d go on to win another Wimbledon, in 2010, plus four U.S. Opens and a pair of Australian Opens on hard courts. 

Nadal’s rivalry with Federer defined the game for years. Fans from places like the United States, Great Britain, and Australia looked past their own countrymen to pull for either the graceful Swiss artiste or the swashbuckling Spaniard. “They transcend the sport,” says Brad Gilbert, an ESPN analyst who has also coached stars like Andre Agassi, Andy Roddick, and most recently, Coco Gauff. “Fed has the biggest fan base in the history of tennis. Rafa maybe the second. They have massive fan bases outside their own countries. You don’t see that that much.”  

And while Nadal toppled Federer at Wimbledon, where Federer has won a record eight titles, Federer never returned the favor in France. Nadal beat Federer all six times they met at Roland-Garros, including four finals (2006, 2007, 2008, 2011).

Nadal’s warrior mentality certainly stood out. But one shouldn’t overlook his singular ability to strike a tennis ball. “Nobody’s ever been able to match Nadal with the forehand topspin, shot after shot after shot, with the same consistency,” says McEnroe. “Nobody.” From the get-go, pundits fretted that the abandon with which Nadal played would wear out his body. “He was like a running back that sometimes took too much pounding,” says Gilbert. “Instead of going out of bounds, he was taking on tacklers.” Yes, injuries disrupted his career at times, and ultimately ended it. Still, few anticipated that he’d last this long, and win this much. He turned pro in 2001, at 15, and strung together a remarkable 23-year career that also included a pair of Olympic gold medals. “He would miss three months, four months with injuries, then every time he would come back, he’d never miss a beat,” says Gilbert.

At Nadal’s first French Open win, back in 2005 when he rocked long hair and a baby face, Gilbert told anyone who would listen he thought Nadal would win seven to ten French Opens. People thought Gilbert was nuts. But it turns out he—and so many others—sold short what Nadal could ultimately accomplish. Nadal exceeded all expectations, on and off the tennis court. While true tennis fans could feel Nadal’s retirement announcement coming, the void seems no less immense.

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Elon Musk has shown off his “Cybercab” in an eagerly anticipated event for Tesla investors, but was vague on crucial details as he predicted the self-driving taxi would be available for less than $30,000.  

“I think the cost of autonomous transport will be so low that you can think of it like individualised mass transit,” Musk said on Thursday, after he made a Hollywood entrance at Warner Bros Studios in Los Angeles, riding in a Cybercab with no steering wheels and pedals.

He said production of the robotaxis was likely to start before 2027, with the caveat that the service needed to be approved by regulators. He also unveiled a prototype for a 20-person autonomous vehicle called “the Robovan”.

Since Tesla announced a “robotaxi day” on April 5, its shares have risen 45 per cent in anticipation of the unveiling. Musk has said the new electric vehicles could take the company’s valuation as high as $5tn, about seven times its current market value. 

However, following months of delay, Musk’s presentation started nearly an hour late and ended in less than 30 minutes, with Optimus autonomous humanoid robots dancing in what looked like a giant fish tank.

“I think this will be the biggest product ever of any kind,” Musk said, adding that the humanoid robot would be available for less than $30,000 at scale. “It can be a teacher or babysit your kids. It can walk your dog, mow your lawn, get the groceries, just be your friend, serve drinks, whatever you can think of.”

Musk has repeatedly missed his own targets to roll out self-driving taxis, first promising fully autonomous rides from Los Angeles to New York by the end of 2017. In 2019, he predicted that 1mn robotaxis would be on the road by the following year.

On Thursday, he said unsupervised rides using its self-driving software could be available in Texas and California from next year.

Most analysts believe it will take several more years for Tesla to roll out the robotaxis in light of the regulatory hurdles and questions about the safety of its self-driving technology, which relies on cameras and artificial intelligence to steer the vehicles. Rivals including Waymo and China’s Baidu depend on lidar — laser-based sensors — and high-definition maps to understand the vehicle surroundings.

In a note ahead of the event, Pierre Ferragu, analyst at New Street Research, said Tesla is unmatched in terms of its access to data through its fleet of nearly 7mn cars on the road, its AI capabilities and the ability to scale. 

But he added: “There is potentially a lot of competition, and the appetite for supervised self-driving, chauffeur services and even robotaxis is uncertain.” 

In recent years, Musk has tried to convince investors to value the company not as an electric vehicle maker, but one focused on autonomous driving and artificial intelligence. 

Its automotive sales, which still account for 82 per cent of its total revenue, have declined in the face of increased competition. More affordable EV offerings from Chinese companies have forced Tesla to cut its prices. 

In its latest quarter, vehicle deliveries rose 6.4 per cent from a year earlier, rebounding for the first time this year, despite slightly missing Wall Street expectations. 

While robotaxis hold potential over the longer term, a bigger focus for investors is whether Tesla can quickly roll out a more affordable EV, known unofficially as the Model 2 that will be priced at $25,000, to replace its ageing product portfolio. 

There had been expectations that Musk would unveil the cheaper model on Thursday.

Following the presentation, Garrett Nelson, analyst at CFRA Research, said he was disappointed by the lack of detail for Tesla’s near-term product road map. “We think the event did little to change an opaque intermediate-term earnings outlook,” he said.

Upmarket UK newsbrands are far less likely to link through to the work of their colleagues at other publishers than tabloid news sites, new Press Gazette research suggests.

Press Gazette assessed recent output from nine leading UK news websites to establish how often they include a hyperlink when repeating information sourced from other publishers.

In the snapshot survey we found that the Mirror and The Sun were the most likely to link to other publishers, doing so in eight out of ten stories assessed at each site.

The Times, Financial Times and Telegraph, on the other hand, each only linked to another news site in one of the ten articles analysed at each and appear to have taken editorial policy decision not to link.

The Guardian and BBC, meanwhile, appeared to link through to their sources slightly less often than not.