“Rafa has trouble serving,” his uncle and former coach, Toni Nadal, discovered a few days ago. And in that facet of the game, diminished by the abdominal problems that he has been suffering for two months, the focus was focused during his training this Wednesday afternoon at the Real Club de Tenis Barcelona. With only five days until the Barcelona Open, the Godó, begins, and less than three for the draw to take place, Rafa Nadal landed in Barcelona from his academy in Manacor and went to train on the court, no less. central, which since 2017 has been named after him. But he did not dispel doubts about his participation.
It was four-thirty in the afternoon when I arrived at the club, still surrounded by the noise of drills, hammers, the smell of freshly cut wood, and workers placing chairs in the VIP boxes of that Rafa Nadal court, where for just over half an hour hour it was possible to follow the evolution of the Manacorí tennis player, who was supposed to start playing at five o’clock although in the end he was half an hour late.
On the freshly watered clay that he has not stepped on in competition since 2022, and with children (and not so children) crowding and curious to see him enter from one of the corners, Nadal appeared alongside Carlos Moyà, his coach, and immediately put on the equipment of your academy. Everything studied to the millimeter. Like the refillable bottles that in this edition of the Godó, and since this training, replace the usual single-use plastic ones.
Rafa Nadal, this Wednesday, on the center court of the Godó.Joan M. Bascu
David Jordà, number 298 in the ATP ranking and the home team, from RCT Barcelona, was waiting for Nadal, who served as his sparring partner, testing his forehand, backhand, and topspin, improving his strength and with it, the volume of his characteristic scream. Nadal immediately took off his thermal undershirt, due to the rigors of spring in the upper area of Barcelona, and shortly after changed the handle of the racket and his position on the court.
And finally, before the media was invited to leave the training, he asked for a volley. It is the closest thing he saw to serving, which he did not try at any time in front of the public. Therefore, the doubt of whether he will be able to compete in that tournament that has been waiting for him since April 24, 2021, when he defeated Stefanos Tsitsipas in the final to win his twelfth Godó since he debuted with the 2005 title, does not dissipate one iota. before Juan Carlos Ferrero, now coach of Carlos Alcaraz.
Nadal, in a moment of rest, this Wednesday in Barcelona. Joan M
“Hello from Barcelona. First training session, with the hope of being here these days before the start of the tournament,” Nadal wrote on social media hours later, when night was falling. And he added: “I’m here to see how it goes, with the desire to try to play.” “It is important to say that I do not want to confirm that I will play, I hope so. We’ll see,” he concluded.
Because there are persistent abdominal discomforts, as he confirmed last Saturday during half-time of the Copa del Rey soccer final between Athletic Club and Mallorca, which he attended in Seville, which made him give up the Monte Carlo Masters 1000, currently ongoing, as well as Indian Wells and Miami in March, and Doha in February. “I keep trying, but it is true that the situation is complicated. I go day by day, I don’t rule out anything, I don’t rule out being in Barcelona next week or in Madrid (the Mutua Madrid Open starts on the 22nd),” he declared on Movistar Plus +.
He had missed the Australian Open in January, the first Grand Slam of the season, due to the muscle micro-tear in the left hip area suffered on the 5th in Brisbane, and which was unrelated to the one he had surgery on in June of the year. passed along with the ailment in the iliopsoas of the left leg with which his ordeal began in January 2023.
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After that tournament with which the year began, Nadal has only been seen briefly in one match, an exhibition match for a content platform, on the night of March 3 in Las Vegas against an Alcaraz that is also a doubt for this Godó, which has conquered in the last two editions, one of Manuel Orantes, Mats Wilander and Roy Emerson. The Murcian has also had to do without Monte Carlo, in his case due to an “injury to the pronator teres of his right arm”, which he himself announced on social networks.
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2024-04-10 16:47:48
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