2023-05-18 16:20:04
Roland-Garros will have to do without Rafa! Absent from the circuit since mid-January, the Spaniard, 14 times winner of the French Open and defending champion, has just announced his withdrawal for the tournament which will be held from May 22 in Paris.
“The connection that I made in Australia has not evolved as I wished (…) It is impossible for me to participate in Roland-Garros”, he announced before a press conference. “You can imagine how difficult it is for me. It was a decision that my body made,” he regretted from his tennis academy in Mallorca. “Rafa” had made an appointment with the press this Thursday at 4 p.m. to announce his decision.
The news was expected, since the 36-year-old Mallorcan – he will be 37 in the middle of Roland-Garros on June 3 – has not appeared in competition for four months, the fault of a stubborn muscle injury to the left hip. (iliopsoas muscle). His last match, a three-set loss in the second round of the Australian Open to American Mackenzie McDonald, in which he was injured, dates back precisely to January 18.
Winner in 2022 despite an anesthetized foot
Initially assessed at between six and eight weeks, his absence has only stretched since, like the list of his forced capitulations, from the American tour on hard (Indian Wells and Miami) to the European season on ochre, from Monte-Carlo to Rome, via Barcelona and Madrid.
“Rafa” will therefore not be present to defend his title, acquired a year ago. Despite an anesthetized left foot to contain the pain caused by the chronic illness he has suffered from since the age of 18 (Müller-Weiss syndrome), the Spaniard had triumphed for the fourteenth time, and for the 22nd time in Grand Slam – record shared with Novak Djokovic since.
2024, “probably my last year”
Let the fans be reassured, “Rafa” has not yet planned to retire. However, he also announced on Thursday that he did not want to play in the coming months. “My objective, my ambition, is to stop for a few months and then give myself the opportunity to come back next year, which will probably be my last year on the tour, even if I cannot be 100% sure that it will,” he added.
Since his first coronation on Parisian clay in 2005, two days after his 19th birthday, Nadal has never failed Porte d’Auteuil. He accumulated 112 victories there and only had three defeats (in 2009, 2015 and 2021), plus a package during the tournament (2016, because of his left wrist).
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