David Bustamante’s Favorite Book: Inspiring Tennis Story

In an Esquire profile, Bustamante presents himself as a “born currant” who has been fighting to stay at the top for almost twenty-five years since that leap into the void that was the first edition of Operación Triunfo: “I was 19 years old, I came from a town of 3,500 inhabitants, I was dedicated to construction and suddenly we were stars that filled the Santiago Bernabéu two days in a row,” he remembers. Since then he has been a finalist for MasterChef Celebritywinner of Your face sounds familiar to mereporter at TVE and occasional boxer in The evening of the yearin addition to losing 20 kilos after quitting smoking: “I’m not much for taking off my shirt, but I’m already at a point where I can do it,” he admits. With such a resume he has said that he is moved by the story of a tennis player who did not go as far as he promised: ‘Tennis from within: From the locker room to the cabin: a journey to the heart of tennis’, by Roberto Carretero Díaz. I’m sure it excites you too.

Bustamante is considered a type of pick and shovel. Esquire asks him the secret to retaining the public’s affection and he responds: “I don’t know how to be any other way. And although life also gives me a lot of blows, I still haven’t become cold or hermetic, I’m still me and I’m confident and excited. I’m a big, inveterate dreamer.” Her resilience and vulnerability also permeate her discourse on the body.: “Throughout my life, I have gained and lost a lot of weight, but because there are times when you don’t have the motivation, energy and willpower. And nothing happens, it will come. (…) Sport is the greatest anxiolytic and the best therapist, but you have to start calmly.” His post-workout breakfast, three scrambled eggs, avocado, ham, spelled bread with tomato, red berries, is a manifesto about discipline and pleasure reconciled.

We read these statements and empathize with the idea of choosing as the biography that has most marked him one of a talent who stayed “halfway.” “I like to see what their story has been like about people I admire, right? Because I know what mine has been like and what it’s like to stand up for yourself and fight. and evolve and fight against oneself,” he explains when talking about ‘Tennis from within’. The work of Roberto Carretero Díaz (Madrid, 1975), former professional tennis player, junior champion of Roland Garros and hero of Masters 1000 from Hamburg in 1996, presents his sports memoirs “from the locker room to the cockpit”.

Tennis from within

“From the locker room to the cabin: a journey to the heart of tennis” is exactly what it offers. Edited by Magazzini Salani and released in October 2025, the book has arrived in Spain with a prologue by Carlos Moya (Palma de Mallorca, 1976) and includes exclusive interviews with names such as Rafa Nadal (Manacor, 1986), Gustavo Kuerten (Florianópolis, 1976), Marat Safin (Moscow, 1980), Alex Corretja (Barcelona, 1974), Albert Costa (Lleida, 1975), the journalist José Antonio Mielgo (Madrid, 1963) and the technician Mariano Hontecillas (Madrid, 1968), among others. Together they reconstruct the career of a player who many saw as an “atomic force” (Carretero’s right was defined as such by Kuerten) and whose potential, in Costa’s words, “was infinite.”

Carretero tells his story “with an open heart”: from the first blows at a campsite in Jaca to that victory in Hamburg in 1996, where, starting from the previous round and ranked 146th in the ranking, he defeated future numbers one and two such as Yevgueni Káfelnikov (Sochi, 1974) and Corretja himself to win a Masters 1000 that seemed reserved for the chosen ones. He was barely 20 years old and had just become Roland Garros junior champion in 1993, which fueled the expectation that Spain had found another top ten imminent. But his career began to unravel with injuries and a personal life that he himself does not sweeten..

The former tennis player from Madrid, today a commentator on Movistar+has said in interviews that the price of early success was very high: the body said “enough” ahead of time and the head took years to reconcile with the feeling of “unfulfilled promise.” In ‘Tennis from within’, his catharsis is articulated with black humor, which distances him from the typical “fallen star” story.

A tennis book that is interesting even if you don’t know how to use a racket

That the prologue is by Moyá and that Nadal, Kuerten, Safin or Corretja parade through its pages may make one think that this is a title only suitable for sports addicts. However, the former Mallorcan number one highlights his explosiveness: “a player with that explosiveness had rarely been seen”; Corretja insists that they always saw in him “huge potential”; Costa remembers that “at that time he was the best of all”; Safin, who “not even he himself understood the potential he really had”; and coach Hontecillas defines him as “the most different” of his generation.

“The transition from the locker room to the cabin” today is one of the most recognizable voices in tennis in Spain. A boy called to win Grand Slams and then an analyst who explains other people’s matches.

In Bustamante’s literary list he also mentions the Mexican Carín León as a musical discovery (“sings blues soul like a god”) and he confesses that he is fascinated by what Rosalía has done. In any case, when talking about books, he returns to the field of hard-working people like Carretero. At home, he remembers, “everyone is always in the heat of a fire and with a guitar.” His best gift from Three Kings was a guitar that his parents hid behind a curtain.

Bustamante has also been pointed out, judged, applauded, criticized, remodeled a thousand times by public life. For him, this great story is a universal x-ray. The singer talks about discipline, about the body, about hope, about starting over. Carretero writes of expectations, pain and reinvention. This intersection is so interesting that we couldn’t help but recommend Carretero’s work, in the words of Bustamante. A perfect Christmas self-gift.