Rafa Nadal Set to Return to Tennis After Year-Long Injury Hiatus

The Mallorcan tennis player Rafa Nadal, in an archive photo (EFE).

Rafa Nadal is back after almost a year out due to his injury to the iliopsoas in his left leg, affecting the tendon and requiring surgery. The Manacorí, who has not played an official match since losing on January 18 in the second round of the Australian Open against Mackenzie McDonald, has already set a date for his return to the competition. It will be the first week of January in the Brisbane tournament, preparatory to the first Grand Slam of the season, the Australian Open.

Three days after making the news of the month public, Nadal has opened up through his social networks. “I am and have been afraid to announce things because in the end it is a year without competing and it is a hip operation, but what worries me most is not the hip, but everything else. I think I’m prepared and confident and I hope that things go well and that it gives me the opportunity to enjoy the track again. I hope I don’t expect anything, this is the truth. Having the ability to not demand of myself what I have demanded of myself throughout my career. I think I am in a different time, in a situation and in unexplored terrain, with which one has internalized what he has done throughout his life, which is to demand the maximum of himself.

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Nadal continues to increase the intensity of his training before returning to the ATP circuit from the beginning of 2024. As part of the preseason, which has largely taken place at his academy in Manacor, he will travel to Kuwati, to another of his training centers, in the who will train alongside the young Frenchman Arthur Fils. The finishing touch to the preparation will take place in Mallorca, until the last days of December, when Rafa Nadal will travel to Brisbane to play his first tournament in the last 12 months.

Rafa Nadal during his last match at the Australian Open 2022 (EFE).

“Right now what I hope is to be able to not do it, to not demand the maximum from myself. To accept that things are going to be very difficult at the beginning and to give myself the necessary time and forgive myself if things go wrong at the beginning, which is a very big possibility. But knowing that there may be a not-too-distant future in which things can change if I maintain the enthusiasm and the spirit of work and the physicist responds to me, without a doubt,” he concludes.

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A year that could well be the last in which he is seen active, with two events surely marked in red on his calendar: Roland Garros and the Paris Olympic Games, whose tennis tournament would be held, precisely, at the facilities. of the Balearic fetish competition. It is still not known exactly when Nadal will return to action. The injury to the iliopsoas that has forced him to be in dry dock for practically all of 2023 has not been a minor thing, and has required considerable time of inactivity that has reduced his classification in the ATP ranking.

This year he has been left out of the top 10 for the first time since 2005, which was when he won his first major (Roland Garros, aged 19). The one from Manacor currently occupies 662nd place in the ATP ranking, leaving him with only 45 points, those achieved this year at the Australian Open. This week he has lost 210 of the 255 points that appeared in his locker and that he defended in the Paris-Bercy Masters 1000. His sights are set on returning to the Australian tour next season and playing the first Grand Slam of the year in Melbourne.

2023-12-04 16:10:00
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