(Madrid) Injured and out of action for almost four months, Rafael Nadal risks, for the first time in his exceptional career, approaching Roland-Garros (May 28-June 11), his beloved playground, without having played any match on clay.
What if he even ended up being forced to give up on the stage of his record 14 Parisian coronations? Impossible not to ask the question.
Monte-Carlo, Barcelona, Madrid and now Rome: week after week, the list of forced capitulations of “Rafa” on ocher grows longer. The latest, on Friday, concerns the Italian tournament, the last of three Masters 1000 on clay, which begins next week, three weeks from Roland-Garros.
“I’m sorry to announce that I won’t be able to be in Rome,” wrote the Majorcan, who turns 37 in early June, on social media.
“I haven’t been able to train at a high level for long months, the recovery process takes time and I have no choice but to accept it and continue working”, resignedly- he, evoking all the same “an improvement observed in recent days”, without further details.
Concretely, Nadal has been deprived of competition by a muscle injury to the left hip (iliopsoas muscle) for almost four months. His last match, an Australian Open second-round loss to American Mackenzie McDonald, in which he suffered an injury, dates back precisely to January 18.
His absence was then estimated at six to eight weeks, but the injury proved to be more tenacious than expected. So tenacious that he is not able until then to mingle with the spring tour on ocher, yet his favorite time of the year.
Technically, he could still line up in Lyon or Geneva the week before the Parisian Grand Slam, but it is highly unlikely.
Which puts him at the foot of an Everest: the Spaniard has never appeared at Roland-Garros without the slightest match on clay in his legs.
A year ago, blamed first on a cracked rib in March, then on waking up from the chronic pain in his left foot he has suffered from since the age of 18 (Müller-Weiss syndrome) in Rome, he only played five. And his triumph at the Porte d’Auteuil, with his foot anesthetized to contain the pain, was a miracle.
Even in 2020, the year of the exceptionally autumnal edition of Roland-Garros, in the context of post-COVID-19 recovery, he had played three matches on clay before arriving in Paris.
Otherwise, since 2005, “Rafa” has always accumulated at least fifteen, and up to more than thirty, matches on clay before Roland-Garros.
Because it’s Nadal and because it’s Roland-Garros, nothing seems impossible anymore. And the Mallorcan, at the twilight of his career, necessarily dreams of a 15th coronation there which would allow him to bring to 23 the record of Grand Slam titles, which he currently shares with Novak Djokovic.
But the challenge promises to be colossal.
Also because this muscle injury comes on top of others, two abdominal tears in particular, which have largely kept Nadal away from the circuit since last summer.
Since August and his resumption after his withdrawal before his semi-final at Wimbledon, he has played only 13 matches and lost eight of them. Very far from its standards.
An additional obstacle: his fall in the ATP rankings, where the ex-world number 1 has so far slipped to 14th, after almost 18 years in the top 10.
“Even if he arrives (at Roland-Garros) without having played since the Australian Open, a player who has won a tournament 14 times will still be difficult to beat in this tournament”, believes the new winning face of Iberian tennis, Carlos Alcaraz.
“But obviously it’s going to be complicated for him, because tennis requires playing matches, spending hours on the court, rhythm,” he continues. But ‘Rafa’ is ‘Rafa’…”
