(Madrid) One month from Roland-Garros, Rafael Nadal has still not played a match on clay: he forfeited Thursday at the Masters 1000 in Madrid, which begins on Monday, due to a stubborn hip injury which raises questions about the rest of his career.
“It has been a long time since I communicated directly with you. It’s been tough weeks and months,” the 36-year-old Spaniard admitted in a video and text posted to his Instagram account on Thursday, looking serious.
“I suffered a major injury in Australia (in January), to the psoas (hip flexor muscle, editor’s note). I was originally supposed to be out six to eight weeks, but we’re already heading into the fourteenth […] The situation is not what we had hoped for. We followed all the medical prescriptions, but for some unknown reason, the injury did not evolve as we had been told at the beginning and we end up in a difficult situation, ”explained Nadal.
“Weeks go by and I had hopes of being able to play tournaments which are the most important of my career, such as Monte-Carlo, Barcelona, Madrid, Rome and Roland-Garros, and for now , I missed those of Monte-Carlo and Barcelona. And unfortunately I won’t be able to be in Madrid either,” he said.
Roland-Garros in the viewfinder
At the twilight of his career, Nadal hopes to celebrate his birthday on June 3 at Roland-Garros (May 28 -June 11) where he will aim for a 15e title to bring to 23 the record of Grand Slam titles, which he currently co-holds with Novak Djokovic.
The former world No. 1 has not played in competition since his defeat in the second round of the Australian Open on January 18 against the American Mackenzie McDonald in three sets. He had felt a sharp pain in a hip in the second set, but went to the end of the game as he struggled to move.
He only has a little over a month to heal and only one major tournament to get his feet wet, in Rome (May 8-21), before the French Open.
“I can’t give a deadline”
On Thursday, Nadal said the injury was “still not healed” and he could “not work hard enough to be able to play competitively”.
“I had come back to training, but a few days ago we decided to change the way of doing things a bit, to start another treatment to see if things improve, to try to get back in time to the next deadlines. I can’t give any deadlines, if I knew them I would tell you, but I don’t know,” said the Spaniard in his video posted on Thursday.
Since his 14e coronation at Roland-Garros in the spring of 2022, where he had triumphed despite an anesthetized left foot to contain the pain caused by the chronic illness from which he has suffered since the age of 18 (Müller-Weiss syndrome), “Rafa” continues to accumulate physical glitches.
An abdominal tear had notably forced him to give up playing his semi-final at Wimbledon a month later.
His long absence from the courts knocked him out of the Top 10 of the world rankings on March 20, for the first time since April 2005.