Rafael Nadal withdraws from the French Open

Rafael Nadal, the 14-time French Open men’s singles champion, will not compete in this year’s edition of the event that defined his career due to an injury that has sidelined him for months.

Nadal, who has competed in Paris every year since 2005 and has a stunning 112-3 record at Roland Garros, made the announcement Thursday at a press conference at his tennis academy on the Spanish island of Mallorca. His withdrawal from the French Open, which begins on May 28, was no surprise. He has not played since he injured his lower abdomen and right leg during the Australian Open in January. But the reality of the announcement and his imminent absence from the red clay where he had reigned for so long shocked the tennis world.

Nadal won last year’s French Open to claim his 22nd Grand Slam singles title, and he has repeatedly called the tournament, the second major of the year, the most important of his career. His absence will create a huge void and the statue of him just a stone’s throw from the main stadium ensures it will be a theme throughout the event.

For weeks as the pro tennis tour wound through the European clay-court season, which he dominated throughout his career, Nadal’s health and his faltering rehab process were some of the game’s key plot points. The talk grew louder each week, his withdrawals – from tournaments in Monte Carlo, then Barcelona, ​​then Madrid – increased.

His most extensive comments before Thursday came in a video posted on social media last month explaining that his ongoing battle to recover from the psoas muscle tear in his lower abdomen and upper right thigh had not gone as planned. Nadal suffered the injury in January during the second round of the Australian Open, the first major tournament of the year, where he was trying to defend his title.

In the days following Nadal’s injury in Australia, his team stated that it expected him to miss six to eight weeks, a timeframe that would have allowed Nadal to return in time for the spring clay-court season in Europe.

The announcement early this month that Nadal would not be playing in Rome, where he has won a record 10 times, set major alarm bells ringing. The conditions there are closest to those of the French Open. Over the weekend, the organizer of a red clay challenger event in France next week said Nadal had not sought to enter that tournament. That meant his opening game at Roland Garros should be his first real game in over four months.

Nadal had said last month that he intended to seek additional treatment for the injury, but did not specify what that treatment entailed and said he had no idea when he would be able to compete again. Throughout a record-breaking but injury-plagued career, Nadal has primarily relied on a group of medical specialists in his native Spain, including Dr. Angel Ruiz Cotorro.

It’s not unheard of for Nadal to enter a Grand Slam tournament without having played a tune-up on the corresponding surface. Nadal entered Wimbledon last year without having played a league game on grass since mid-2019. He made it to the semifinals but was forced to withdraw due to an abdominal injury.

The psoas muscle injury is the latest in a string of ailments over the past 18 months — the flare-up of a chronic foot injury, a cracked rib and a pulled abdominal muscle — that have led Nadal, who turns 37 on June 3, to miss many of the tournaments. misses that are usually on his schedule. It comes at a time in his career where his retirement is starting to feel less conceptual and more like a looming reality by the week.

To make matters worse, tennis punishes inactivity in a way that can make it especially hard to come back after long layoffs. If Nadal misses the entire clay-court season, he will experience a catastrophic drop in the world rankings the likes of which he has not experienced in the past two decades.

In March, Nadal dropped out of the top 10 for the first time in 18 years. Missing the French Open will likely see him drop out of the top 100 for the first time since 2003. While he can still gain entry into a tournament by requesting a wild card, depending on how long he’s been sidelined and whether his ranking qualifies for protection, he may not be seeded and is likely to face top players much sooner than normal.

That will present a special challenge for Nadal, who has often talked about playing himself into form and finding his rhythm with a string of victories against lesser competition. That chance is not there without a higher ranking, and winning matches is the only way to get a higher ranking. Britain’s Andy Murray, who turned 36 on May 15, is a two-time Wimbledon champion who climbed to No. 1 in 2016 and has been battling this dynamic since returning from major hip surgery four years ago.

Nadal’s absence leaves the door wide open for Carlos Alcaraz, the Spanish sensation who turned 20 earlier this month and last year became the youngest man ever to reach the world’s top after winning the US Open; or Novak Djokovic, who is tied with Nadal with 22 Grand Slam titles. Djokovic has had his own injury problems during the clay-court season, although he appeared to be in fine form this week in Rome at the Italian Open.

When he rejoined the tour in April, he aggravated an elbow injury in Monte Carlo and Barcelona. He then retired from Madrid to rest for Rome, where he won six times, and Roland Garros, where he won twice, most recently in 2021.

World No. 1 Djokovic missed two major hard court tournaments in the United States in March because he was unable to enter the country without being vaccinated against Covid-19. The Biden administration has ended that requirement, meaning Djokovic can play at the US Open.