“You seem to be very disappointed with your performance?
It was difficult, obviously. I started the match well. In the first two games, almost half an hour, I had opportunities and I played pretty well. Then I lost a little how to push him back, how to cause damage in his game. The score of the first set is a little misleading, I think anyway. Then, he was much better than me in the second.
I couldn’t push him away. This is how. He served well. It was difficult for me to go back and push him to make a mistake. We have to accept this. It’s a tough day for me in every way because I felt more ready than I showed. It’s a bad feeling not to be able to show on the pitch what I feel in terms of the game. It makes me doubt, in a way. As I said at the start of the tournament, I am more unpredictable today. We have to accept that. Too many doubts. Too many questions in all directions, on different points of the game. That’s it.
“Physically, I have some concerns, but probably not enough yet to say that I will not participate in the most important event of my career”
We see how difficult it is for you to get back to playing well after so much time away from the courts. The question today is: will you be at Roland-Garros?
You can see today on the ground how difficult it actually is (smile). Now there are two possible paths: one of them would probably be to say “ok, I’m not ready, I’m not playing well enough”, then it’s time to make the decision not to play at Roland Garros. Another is to accept how I am today and work in the right way to try to be better in two weeks.
The decision, as you can imagine, is not clear in my mind today. But if I have to say what my feeling is, if my mind leans more one way than the other, I would say: be at Roland Garros and do my best. Physically, I have some concerns, but probably not yet enough to say that I will not participate in the most important event of my career. Let’s see what happens, how I feel mentally tomorrow, the day after tomorrow and a week from now. If I feel ready, I will try to be there and fight for the things I have been fighting against for 15 years, even if it seems impossible today.
In Madrid you talked about playing doubles with Alcaraz in the Olympics. Do you have a tournament in mind that you could participate in together before the Olympics?
It seems difficult. I do not know yet. There aren’t many tournaments left that we could play together before the Olympics. At Roland Garros, this will not be the case. It seems difficult, we’ll see.
A ceremony was planned in your honor on the field after your defeat, to salute your career. It seems that you declined it?
I never said this would be my last tournament here. I said it in Madrid because it was the case. Here I am not 100% sure. It’s probably 98%… It’s a different feeling here compared to Madrid, a different story. I wasn’t expecting any ceremony, honestly. »
2024-05-11 14:48:10
#Rafael #Nadal #defeat #Hubert #Hurkacz #Rome #RolandGarros
