2023-04-25 14:46:53
Madrid (AFP)
Tony Nadal, the uncle and former coach of Spanish tennis star Rafael Nadal, expressed his optimism that the 22-time Grand Slam champion will play the French Open finals at Roland Garros, but the record-breaking 14-time champion will not participate in ideal conditions.
“Rafa is recovering,” Tony Nadal said in an interview with the official Spanish TVA channel. “I don’t think he will need a long time to compete again, but here in the Madrid Open it will not be possible.”
Nadal announced last week that he would not participate in one of the 1,000-point Masters tournaments in Madrid, as he continues to recover from a thigh injury he suffered last January at the Australian Open.
The thirty-six-year-old said that the recovery journey did not bear fruit and he may resort to a different treatment, without setting a deadline for himself in order to recover, to reinforce doubts about his absence from Roland Garros.
He hopes to break the Grand Slam partnership with his Serbian rival Novak Djokovic.
His uncle, Toni Nadal, added, “It goes without saying that he will not arrive with good preparations. We should not cheat ourselves, because he has not played since January 10, if I am not mistaken.”
Nadal withdrew from the tournaments held in the United States last month on hard court, but he also missed the tournaments on clay courts in Barcelona and Monte Carlo, to the Madrid tournament.
Nadal has suffered from several injuries in recent years. He played Roland Garros last year with a leg injury that did not prevent him from winning the title, then withdrew from the Wimbledon semi-finals a month later due to a stomach rupture.
The long absence from the stadiums for the former world number one led to his exit from the top ten list in the world rankings on March 20 for the first time since April 2005.
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