Rafael Nadal (39) definitively ended his very successful career as a professional tennis player about a year ago, but he remains in the world of white sports and entertains fans, journalists and the media here and there. On Friday, he “opted out” of the upcoming Australian Open on social media and his post went viral.
Nadal has dealt with a lot of injuries throughout his career and unfortunately is not 100% fit even a year after officially ending his highly successful run in the world of professional tennis. He underwent surgery on his right hand this week in Barcelona due to osteoarthritis.
“I had to have an operation on my hand because I have been struggling with this problem for a long time. I hope I will be fine soon” Nadal informed his fans in a post on social media. However, he started with a sentence that then went viral.
“Looks like I won’t be playing the Australian Open 2026 huh?” he wrote, adding a laughing emoticon. The post has over a million views on social network X alone and was written about by, for example, tennis.com or the Association of Tennis Professionals itself. He has already collected almost 400 thousand reactions and almost seven thousand comments on Instagram.
Nadal won 22 Grand Slam trophies during his career and is one of the most successful players in tennis history. He finally ended his career last year at the Davis Cup final tournament in November.
His further activity was mainly stopped by a serious hip injury. But he could soon appear on the tennis courts again. One of his biggest rivals, Roger Federer, revealed that he is preparing a series of exhibition matches with the Spaniard, who agrees with this plan.
