With 22 Grand Slams to his name, the Spaniard has suffered a large number of injuries that prevented him from further developing his legend.
The injury suffered by Mackenzie McDonald in the second round of the Australian Open adds to a long list of physical mishaps in the career of Rafa Nadal, who on many occasions was overweight and unable to run with full force. compete. This time, the cause of the injury was the hip, which he suffered from in the past, but Nadal’s ordeal since he started his career in professional tennis has punished him with serious problems in the knee, foot, abdomen, shoulder, elbow. and pulse.
«I noticed something in the hip and it’s over. I can’t say I’m not devastated because then I’d be lying. I’m tired of this injury thing all the time. It’s very hard mentally to go through the process and the work it takes to recover,” Nadal said on Tuesday after this latest hip injury.
The balance is shocking. With this amount, he already has 23 injuries to his name in a 19-year professional career, with an average of more than one serious injury per course. Despite being the player with the most Grand Slams in history, Nadal was absent from twelve of those tournaments, and played less in another thirteen, even retiring from four of those tournaments.
Compared to his rival for the tennis throne, Novak Djokovic, the Spaniard has missed more Grand Slam tournaments, but the Serb has withdrawn more in already started tournaments, to two more than Nadal. The Serb, who has had a more benevolent career with injuries, played 51 Grand Slams in a row from 2005 to 2017, something unthinkable for the Spaniard.
Next, we take a look at the main injuries Nadal has suffered throughout his career that have robbed him of more triumphs than he has to his name:
The best year of Nadal’s career, in which he won no less than 11 titles, had an unpleasant end. After winning in Madrid with tendonitis, the Spaniard was out for more than four months after being diagnosed with Müller-Weiss syndrome in his left foot, a degenerative disease of the scaphoid that has plagued him throughout his career to this day. tormented. He missed the Paris Master 1000, the Masters Cup and the Australian Open the following season.
That season, Nadal suffered one of his biggest setbacks, the Roland Garros final against Robin Soderling, his first defeat on Parisian clay and losing the number one position. After this blow came another in the form of knee tendinitis, one of his constant headaches throughout his career, which kept him off the ring for nearly three months, absent from summer tournaments and Wimbledon.
Nadal’s most serious career injury came in 2012, after losing to Lukas Rosol in the second round of Wimbledon. A rupture of the patellar tendon in his left knee and hoffitis in it, which kept him off the slopes for seven months. He did not play at the London Olympics nor the Canada, Cincinnati, US Open, Shanghai, Paris, Masters Cup and Australian Open tournaments in 2013. Nadal that same year after his knee injury.
Nadal announced with surprise that he was withdrawing from Roland Garros before playing the third round of the tournament, due to a wrist injury that kept him in dry dock for three months: “I know I can’t finish the tournament. It’s part of life and I hope to return to Roland Garros for many years to come. Today is one of the toughest press conferences of my career, as I have to leave the most important tournament of my professional career. He was also unable to play the Wimbledon tournament. Nadal enforced at the Olympics, but gave up the Masters 1000 in Paris and the Masters Cup.
After a 2017 with hardly any physical shocks, Nadal suffered a potpourri of accidents in 2018. In the quarterfinals of the Australian Open against Marin Cilic, he was forced to withdraw due to an iliac psoas injury, which kept him off court for two and a half months.
He also retired in the semifinals of the US Open against Juan Martin Del Potro, suffering from another tendinitis in his left knee, which sidelined him for another two months, during which he missed the Asian tour. Finally, an abdominal tear in the latter part of the season made it impossible for him to play the Masters 1000 in Paris and the Masters Cup.
Nadal’s last two seasons have been huge. “I’m not injured, I live with an injury,” the Spaniard said after a fall in the Masters 1000 in Rome against Denis Shapovalov. He has played in constant pain and suffered up to three serious injuries. And yet he has won two Grand Slams. The degenerative lesion in his scaphoid resurfaced in late 2021. He was out for four months and unable to play Wimbledon or the US Open, and arrived at the Australian Open in between cotton wool.
In the Indian Wells tournament, Nadal suffered a third costal arch, forcing him to retire for a few weeks. He fell in Rome, again suffering from the scaphoid, and with his presence at Roland Garros in serious doubt, although he managed to arrive, not without pain, to win his twenty-second Grand Slam. He eventually retired in the Wimbledon semifinals before facing Nick Kyrgios, having suffered a seven millimeter laceration to the abdomen.
“This situation loses meaning to me. First the foot got going, it seemed to do better. Now it is checked and I can enjoy playing tennis. And now this, jeopardizing my immediate future and my long-term future, and I don’t want to take any chances,” concluded Nadal, who despite being one step away from another grand finale, was forced to retire
Source: La Verdad
I am Shawn Partain, a journalist and content creator working for the Today Times Live. I specialize in sports journalism, writing articles that cover major sporting events and news stories. With a passion for storytelling and an eye for detail, I strive to be accurate and insightful in my work.
