Barring any last-minute issues, Rafael Nadal will return to action Tuesday when he plays in the Barcelona Open. It will be his first clay-court event of the year, just his second tournament in the past 15 months — and his eagerly anticipated comeback will be scrutinized for evidence of his physical state.
The road to this point has been far from easy. After injuring a hip flexor at the Australian Open in 2023, when he was the defending champion, Nadal had arthroscopic surgery last summer and missed the rest of the year. He returned in the ATP event in Brisbane, Australia, at the start of this year and looked good, winning two matches.
Statistically, according to Tennis Data Innovations and TennisViz, which monitor the ATP Tour, Nadal was playing top-10 level tennis there, only to subsequently pull out of the 2024 Australian Open, feeling more discomfort near his hip, albeit not the same injury as the year before.
Since then, Nadal has been battling an abdominal issue that he says was causing pain when serving. He played Carlos Alcaraz in the Netflix Slam in March, but pulled out of Indian Wells soon after. He had hoped to play in the Monte Carlo Masters last week, an event he has won 11 times, but had to withdraw there too, much to the disappointment of the tournament, which had been inundated with requests for media accreditation.
The good news is that after an intensive week of practice at the Real Club de Tenis in Barcelona, Nadal will play in this week’s event there. It’s a city and tournament close to his heart — his uncle Miguel Angel Nadal played football for Barcelona and Nadal himself has won the title there a record 12 times. Using his protected ranking, Nadal didn’t need a wild card to enter and he will play Italian Flavio Cobolli in the first round.
When Nadal withdrew from Roland Garros early last summer, the 22-time major winner said that 2024 is likely to be his last year on tour and he reiterated a desire to finish his career on his own terms. “I don’t think I deserve to end like this,” he said at the time.
Nadal turns 38 in June, a grand old age for any top tennis player, even if he’s only a year older than Novak Djokovic, who is still the world No 1. He has won 92 titles worldwide, 22 of them Grand Slams, including a record 14 French Open crowns. He has amassed…
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