Living Proof- Nick Jacobson's story (Русский)

Oh, this is just phenomenal. Every inch of the center court at the Monte Carlo Country Club have just been covered. Nadal, as he does so often when it matters most, comes up with a scintillating winner. Nadal not only getting there, but being then able to dictate with the point. The spin on the ball. He makes the ball check on contact. Nadal breaks for a second time here in the deciding set. And that may well be that. There it is. Nadal is tested to the limit on his favorite red clay for the first time in a long time. Very nearly lasted three hours. Nadal emerges. Could it be that Nadal will emulate Manuel Santana, Spain's last men's champion? Nadal recovers. And Julie takes the first set. Oh, yes. There's that backhand. Oh, yes. That's what Nadal does so well. Perhaps better than any other player in the game. Desperate. Under enormous pressure, he hangs onto the serve. Hello, my name is Nick Jacobsen and I'm 17 years old. I first started getting into tennis by watching Nadal on YouTube and sort of copying his style. Tennis for me was, let's say, the improving sport for my condition. Basically making the symptoms a little less noticeable and improving my hand-eye coordination, which was the main purpose. Unfortunately, when Nick was 10 months old, he had an accident which left him with cerebral palsy. And it kind of changed our whole family's life, as anyone who has had anything like that happen knows. Any kind of illness or long-term disability of a child especially, it affects the whole family and extended families. But out of that trauma and somewhat tragedy, we have got the most amazing angel with us, Nicholas. And he has been an amazing teacher, not just to me, but I think everybody he meets. He's one of the most determined, most passionate young children that I've ever known from a very young age. He never, ever gave up. He was a fighter and to this day he still fights. So, I believe this one was my first one. I was a finalist and this one here was back in June, three years ago. And I was up against really tough players at that time who were about a year or two older than me. And I was about 13, so I think at that stage I wasn't good enough yet to compete with, let's say, the big dogs of the club. His brother has been amazing. He's been wonderfully supportive of him and guiding him and helping him. And one of the times where he really was guiding him the most was when they were very young and they played tennis together. And Nicholas, obviously having cerebral palsy, being a hemiplegic, didn't have very good fine motor skills and obviously hand-eye coordination was very weak. And so tennis didn't really enter into his realm until a few years later when suddenly we got a call from the tennis club where I used to send him. And they said, what's happened? And I said, what do you mean? And they said, I think you need to come down here. And Nick had been watching YouTube videos for a long time, every day after school actually, of Rafa Nadal. One of the things I noticed when he was watching these videos is that he was so immersed in them. And later I realized when I went to see him that particular day and then obviously every week onwards from there as he got better and better, is that children like Nicholas, they have photographic memories, some of them. And we'd seen this when he was very young. He learnt to read at the age of three. And he started to be able to do things like times table and everything that you do by memory, he could do within days, whereas it might take another child weeks and weeks and months. And with the tennis it was amazing because what he did is he basically memorized the forehand, the backhand, the serve of Rafa, as well as all the nuances that Rafa does and started copying his hair and all mannerisms and he became a little Rafa. When I went to the tennis court, I couldn't believe it. He was from a child that couldn't even hit the ball. He was just whacking this ball, beating his opponent who was on