An injured Rafael Nadal withdraws from the French Open

Rafael Nadal, the 14-time French Open men’s singles champion, will not take part in this year’s edition of the career-defining event due to an injury that has sidelined him for months.

Nadal, who has competed in Paris every year since 2005 and has an impressive record of 112-3 at Roland Garros, made the announcement at a news conference Thursday at his tennis academy on the Spanish island of Mallorca.

Nadal said he would extend his break from the match to try to get healthy and then try to play next season, which he said “will probably be my last year on the professional tour.”

“This is my idea,” he said. “Even this, I can’t say 100 percent it will be like this because you never know what will happen, but my idea and my motivation is to try to have fun and try to say goodbye to all the tournaments that have been important to me in my tennis career.”

His withdrawal from the French Open, set to begin on May 28, did not come as a surprise. He has not played since injuring his lower abdomen and right leg at the Australian Open in January. But the fact of the announcement, and the imminent absence of him from the red courts that he ruled for a long time, shook the world of tennis.

“I’ve been working as hard as I can every day for the past four months and it’s been a very difficult month because we couldn’t find a solution to the problem I had in Australia,” said Nadal. “Today I am still in a position where I cannot feel ready to compete at the standards I need to play at Roland Garros.”

Nadal won the French Open last year to claim his 22nd Grand Slam title, and he has repeatedly described the tournament as the second Grand Slam of the year, and the most important of his career. His absence will create a massive void that will ensure his statue just steps from the main stadium will be a subject throughout the event.

Nadal has made it clear that he does not want to play the tournament without any realistic opportunity to truly compete.

He said, “I’m not a guy who’s going to be at Roland Garros and I’m just going to try to be there and put myself in a situation I don’t like to be in.”

Nadal said that, after pushing himself through pain in an effort to prepare for the French Open, he will now take an extended break from training in an effort to get healthy.

“I don’t know when I will be able to return to the training ground, but I will be off for a while,” he said. “Maybe two months. Maybe a month and a half. Maybe three months. Maybe four months. I don’t know. I’m not the guy who likes to predict the future but I just follow my personal feelings and follow what I truly believe is the right thing to do for my body and my personal happiness.”

For weeks, as the professional tennis tour meandered through the European clay season, which has dominated his entire career, Nadal’s health and stalled rehabilitation process were some of the game’s key points. Every week there was more talk of withdrawals – from Monte Carlo, then Barcelona, ​​then Madrid.

His most comprehensive comments came before Thursday in a video Posted on social media He explained last month that his ongoing battle to recover from a torn psoas muscle in his lower abdomen and upper right leg had not gone as planned. Nadal was injured in January during the second round of the Australian Open, the first major tournament of the year, as he was trying to defend his title.

In the days following Nadal’s injury in Australia, his team stated that they expected him to miss six to eight weeks, a schedule that would have allowed Nadal to return in time for the spring clay court season in Europe.

The announcement at the beginning of this month that Nadal would not play in Rome, where he won a record 10 times, sounded the alarm. The conditions there are the closest to those at the French Open. Over the weekend, the organizer of a competitive red clay event in France next week said Nadal was not seeking to participate in that tournament. That means his opening match at Roland Garros should be his first real competition in over four months.

Nadal said last month that he intended to seek additional treatment for the injury, but did not specify what that would involve and said he had no idea when he would be able to compete again. Throughout his record-setting, but injury-plagued career, Nadal has relied primarily on a group of medical professionals in his native Spain, including Dr. Angel Ruiz Cuturo.

It is not uncommon for Nadal to enter a Grand Slam tournament without having played a Chemistry on the opposite deck. Nadal entered Wimbledon last year without playing a competitive match on grass since mid-2019. He reached the semi-finals but had to withdraw due to an abdominal injury.

The psoas muscle injury is the latest in a series of ailments over the past 18 months — a flare-up in a chronic foot injury, a cracked rib and an abdominal muscle — that have caused Nadal, who turns 37 on June 3, to miss several matches. Tournaments that are usually on his schedule. It comes at a time in his career when retirement is starting to feel less imaginable and more like a looming reality with each passing week.

To make matters worse, tennis punishes inactivity in a way that makes returning from long layoffs particularly difficult. If Nadal misses the entire clay court season, he will face a catastrophic drop in the world rankings unlike anything he has experienced in the past two decades.

In March, Nadal dropped out of the top 10 for the first time in 18 years. By missing the French Open, he will likely drop out of the top 100 for the first time since 2003. While he will still be able to enter any tournament by claiming a wild card, depending on how long he is sidelined and whether his ranking will qualify. To protect, he may not be rated and is likely to face the top players much earlier than he usually does.

That will pose a particular challenge to Nadal, who has often spoken of the need to play in good form and find his rhythm through a string of wins against lesser competition. This opportunity will not be available without a higher ranking, and winning matches is the only way to achieve a higher ranking. Britain’s Andy Murray, who turns 36 on May 15, is a two-time Wimbledon champion who rose to No. 1 in 2016 and has been battling that dynamic since returning from major hip surgery four years ago.

Nadal’s absence has left the door wide open for Carlos Alcaraz, the Spaniard who turned 20 earlier this month and last year became the youngest man ever to achieve the world’s highest ranking after winning the US Open; Or Novak Djokovic, who is tied with Nadal for 22 Grand Slam singles titles. Djokovic has struggled with his injury problems during the clay court season, although he looked to be in solid shape this week in Rome at the Italian Open.

When he returned to the tour in April, he aggravated an elbow injury in Monte Carlo and Banja Luka. Then he withdrew from Madrid to rest in Rome, where he won six times, and Roland Garros, where he won twice, most recently in 2021.

World No. 1 Djokovic missed two important hard court tournaments in the United States in March because he was unable to enter the country without a Covid-19 vaccination. The Biden administration has ended this requirement, which means Djokovic will be able to play in the US Open.