I have watched Nadal practice at least 20 times and the funny thing is there
are no severe OCD rituals and time wasting than, the most you might see him do is fiddle with his finger tape, if the condition was so severe it was uncontrollable, you would see it in his every day life all the time.
Depends on the severity of the OCD. Nadal didn't have all these rituals,say,in 2002. In only manifests itself when the pressure of a real match is on so it may be a milder form of OCD because it is only present in certain conditions. It's one thing to have one or two superstitions(not that uncommon in sports) about how to arrange this and that,but Nadal's rituals are well...weird to say the least and they show his OCD quite well. Nadal doesn't arrange his bottles in practice and I have seen him practice even without picking the pants.
When Tony was asked where he got this from he said smilingly "I have no idea,I didn't teach him this",looking almost embarrased. At a certain match they showed his butt picking and how he arranged the bottles(taking a sip out of each one and placing them with the label towards the side he would play on) on the big screen and even Nadal looked embarrased by his rituals.
Seeing this I couldn't help think that this guy can't help himself. Maybe I could understand faking a form of OCD to get away with time wasting but what is up with the picking of the butt publicly or how he gets mad when something happens to his water bottles. This is classic OCD,where the sufferer thinks HE HAS TO DO certain things in certain cituations(it would be funny to see how he reacts if they kick his water bottles over and over again or if they don't allow him to pick his butt) and is very anxious or even mad if he can't do them,even though there is no logical reason for him to think like that. Like I said before it is one thing to have superstitions in sports but Nadal knows what he is doing is embarrassing yet he can't help himself. Again,classic OCD though I don't think Nadal has a severe form,just one that hasn't been adressed as he has been increasing the number of rituals as the years pass and his time wasting because of this rituals has got worse. He dropped just one bit,adjusting the socks,but he always replaced it with another ritual.
If you look at all these rituals that occur during a match,they tend to be drawn out to make Nadal concentrate better and he always towels off-clears the line if we are talking about clay-takes three balls-chooses one-sometimes looks at his racket,start bouncing the ball,picks his butt,then he arranges the hair,then he beats the ball some more and then he starts his serve motion. When there is a changeover,the takes one sip out of every bottle and place them to face the side of the court on which he is playing on.
Now,if he did all these things slowly without the quirky rituals like butt picking and water bottle arangement,I would say that this is just a superstitious guy who happens to serve slowly but these two things for me,along with the reactions,from Nadal and his camp say it is a mild form of OCD which hasn't been adressed because Rafa isn't only doing some things to keep his cool on court(which all players do) but he is also doing things that have nothing to do with tennis and are downright embarrassing yet he can't help but do them.