Rafa Nadal returns. The Spaniard confirmed this Friday that he will return to competition at the ATP 250 tournament in Brisbane, which will be held starting December 31, and that will serve as preparation for the first major tournament of the year 2024, the Australian Open, where he started the fight against the iliac psoas that has kept him away from the slopes for a year.
With a video remembering his injury against Mackenzie McDonald in Melbourne a year ago and remembering his words – “I have tried hard enough not to end up like this” -, Nadal announced his return to the professional circuit. He will do so at number 664 in the world ranking, after a year in dry dock and at 37 and a half years old, an age at which no one in the history of the Open Era has managed to win a Grand Slam. The oldest tennis player to achieve one was Ken Rosewall at the Australian Open in 1972, at 37 years and one month.
Nadal has the hope of returning and being able to say goodbye in his own way, on the court and against the best in the world. “I think it will be my last year,” he responded in the summer, when he announced that he would take the rest of 2023 off to definitively recover and heal his body, too punished by recent injuries: the chronic foot problem, a fractured rib and a break. abdominal in 2022 and the blessed iliopsoas in 2023.
Ahead is a beautiful and difficult challenge. He will first warm up in Brisbane, before the Australian Open, where the conditions and inactivity will test him. In Melbourne he has won twice (2009 and 2022), but now he faces this Grand Slam with little preparation on the court, against the extreme heat of Australia, younger and in some cases (Jannik Sinner and Carlos Alcaraz) improved rivals, the odyssey of the seven matches to the best of five sets and a Novak Djokovic who has already threatened that he wants the four Grand Slam titles in the same year, which no man has achieved since Rod Laver in 1969.
Given the difficulty, Nadal did not hide his caution: «I am not going to surpass Djokovic’s record of 24 Grand Slams. We are not in that, I live a very different reality. “I haven’t played in a year and for me personal success is still having the hope of returning,” Nadal said last November in Barcelona. Some moderate and logical expectations, since Nadal’s last ‘major’ dates back to Roland Garros 2022, when he competed clearly diminished by the scaphoid injury, and because since then not only has Djokovic left the major record at 24, but because , other tennis players, like Alcaraz, have proven to be capable of winning this type of tournaments as well. In 2024 where Sinner, recent finalist of the Masters Cup and Davis Cup champion, is expected to take the definitive step to fight in Grand Slams as well, the competition for these titles is more expensive than ever.
The Paris Olympics, your desired farewell
For the first touchstone on the road, the Brisbane tournament, Nadal will be able to take advantage of the protected ranking, which allows him to enter the events with the classification he had at the time of the injury (number 2 in the world) or receive an invitation of the tournament itself. The protected ranking rule will be valid for twelve tournaments throughout the season, having been away for twelve months, so he can confidently face the challenges he decides.
On the horizon are the Olympic Games, perhaps his desired farewell, because the Australian tournament in Brisbane will be held at the Roland Garros facilities and offers friendlier prospects: six matches with the best of three sets. The problem will be calendar congestion. Roland Garros takes place from May 26 to June 9, Wimbledon, from July 1 to 14, and the Olympic event begins on July 27. All this with the clay-grass-clay transition, the hardest in the sport.
Of course, Nadal does not have a defined calendar or deadlines. Everything will depend on how his body reacts, how he recovers and what his competitive level is. That will mark the future of the season and the possible goodbye. Along the way, he dreams of matches that remember the battles of yesteryear, such as against Djokovic, with whom he maintains the most disputed rivalry in the history of tennis: 59 matches, with 30 victories for the Serbian and 29 for the Spaniard. . Even the Serb himself wanted one last meeting with the Spaniard. «It would be nice for tennis if there was one more meeting with Nadal. “I hope it happens,” responded the winner of 24 Grand Slams. In Brisbane, for now, Holger Rune, Grigor Dimitrov and Andy Murray will be waiting for the Manacor native, as the first announced stars.
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