Tennis: hip, thigh, abdominals... for Nadal, 20 years of fighting against injuries

Less than a week after his long-awaited return to the courts, Rafael Nadal relapsed. Victim of a “micro muscle tear” during his return tournament in Brisbane, where he was eliminated in the quarter-final, the Spaniard announced this Sunday his withdrawal from the Australian Open.

“At the moment, I am not ready to play five-set matches at the maximum level of demand. I am going back to Spain to see my doctor, get treatment and rest,” he said on his social networks. The Majorcan surely expected something else from his return after a long year-long rehabilitation, marked by two operations.

If the Mallorcan remains “positive about the progress of the season” and assures that his withdrawal “is not very bad news”, this new injury is not likely to reassure his fans.

For more than two decades, Rafael Nadal tormented his body and only dominated pain and injuries thanks to his extraordinary mentality, until dropping out in 2022, despite a left foot that has been making him suffer for 18 years, a 14th Roland-Garros, his 22nd Grand Slam title.

In mid-May 2023, a hip injury occurred in the second round of the Australian Open in January, which forced him to withdraw from his favorite tournament of Roland-Garros.

The elbow, the shoulder, the left hand and wrist, the back, the right forearm (while he plays with the left hand), the abdominals, the ribs but also the knees, the ankles, the thigh ... “He’s an injured person who plays tennis,” summed up his uncle and historic coach Toni Nadal in April 2019, according to comments reported by the Spanish newspaper Cinco Dias.

According to his doctor Angel Ruiz, the player has “wonderful genetics” which he combines with a mentality like no other and above all with “an exceptional resistance to pain which would be 9 on a scale of 10”.

“The majority of players would have retired, he wouldn’t,” insists the doctor in an interview published in June 2019 in the Spanish daily El Mundo. In 2009, he entered the US Open with an abdominal tear. “As it only bothers the serve and not really the rest, I played and lost in the semi against Del Potro. But the tear had gone from 7mm to 27mm, it was a bit stupid of me,” commented Nadal.

In 2014, it was with almost a hole in his left hand, due to a huge blister, that he appeared in the semi-final of the Australian Open against Roger Federer... whom he beat in three sets before losing in the final to Stan Wawrinka.

On several occasions, injuries kept him away from the circuit. Always, until then, he had returned. Not to just play, but to win.

Thus, at the end of the 2008 season, he suffered from tendonitis in his knee. He gave up at Paris-Bercy and renounced the Masters at the end of the year. All this to return two months later at the 2009 Australian Open and make Federer cry after inflicting one of the most bitter defeats of his career after a 4h30 match. In the semi-finals, the Spaniard had already fought 5h14 to eliminate Fernando Verdasco.

The first long break in his career came in 2012 when he ended his season after a defeat in the second round of Wimbledon, again due to knee pain.

Returning to the circuit in February 2013, he won ten tournaments that year, including Roland-Garros and the US Open, as well as five Masters 1000s.

But his most dazzling return, because it is completely improbable at over 35, is that of 2022.

Eliminated by Novak Djokovic in the semi-finals of Roland-Garros in spring 2021, Nadal was faced with a sudden awakening of pain in his left foot, which had suffered for years from Müller-Weiss syndrome, a degenerative necrosis of the bone scaphoid which means that a bone in the foot is no longer irrigated normally and gradually dies. This disease is “chronic and incurable”, in the words of the player who has had to manage it since he was 18 years old.

He did not play again this season and, testing positive for Covid-19 in December 2021, he approached the 2022 season with more than approximate preparation.

Winner at the start of the Melbourne tournament, he followed up with a phenomenal and historic victory at the Australian Open: by coming back two sets in the final against Daniil Medvedev, he brought the record for Grand Slam titles to 21.

“This injury would prevent 99% of humans from moving at the speed at which it moves,” said the president of the Spanish Society of Sports Traumatology, Doctor Rafael Arriaza, to the daily Voz de Galicia at the end of January 2022.

“Rafa hits the ball a lot better than before, but he runs a lot worse than before. As long as the results are there we don't always see it, but for me it's extremely obvious. And all of a sudden, it will drop so much physically that it will no longer even allow him to hit as he can, and the decline is rapid,” warned the Frenchman Gilles Simon in an interview with AFP on the 9th. May 2022.

At Indian Wells 2022, it was a stress fracture in his ribs which likely cost him the final after a victory in the semi-finals against the phenomenon Carlos Alcaraz.

“I think he has unimaginable pain when he gets up in the morning or when he leaves the field and I usually say that when Rafa starts to grimace, to say that he has pain somewhere, to For us it would be a vital prognosis...", according to former French player Fabrice Santoro, now a consultant for Prime Video.

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