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Rafael Nadal is ready to play again. In America. On hard court. Should he?

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For more than a month, smoke signals from Rafael Nadal’s camp have kept the tennis world on edge, leading to predictions about everything from a triumphant spring on the red clay of Paris to the fact that he would never play a competitive match again after yet another hip injury in the past. Australia in January.

The only thing that seemed clear was that the 22-time Grand Slam champion was prioritizing the clay-court season in Europe this spring. Nadal said this in January when he returned after a year-long layoff due to hip surgery.

Sure, he was happy to be back and competing in Australia, where he won’t win the year’s first Grand Slam until 2022, but he was mostly focused on being in top form – or, at least, as close as he could come. at this point – in three months, when the red clay tournaments begin in earnest.

That was one of the reasons he skipped the Australian Open when he suffered a small muscle tear near his hip for three matches during his last comeback. Logic suggested that Nadal wait until tennis returned to the organic surfaces that are much less stressful on the body and where an aging, injury-prone player like Nadal, who is 37 and plays the most physical style of tennis, would have the best chance of playing tennis . staying healthy.

Few were surprised when he announced on social media this month that he was withdrawing from a hard-court tournament in Doha. It was the second sentence of that message that caught some off guard.

“I will focus on continuing to work to be ready for the exhibition in Las Vegas and the great Indian Wells tournament,” Nadal wrote on Valentine’s Day.

That would be an MGM Resorts exhibition match against 20-year-old Spanish sensation Carlos Alcaraz this weekend in Las Vegas, which will be streamed on Netflix, and then the BNP Paribas Open in nearby Indian Wells, California, starting next week.

That struck some as strange. Still, he still had enough time to withdraw from those events and spend a few more weeks in Spain to prepare for the clay.

And last week, Novak Djokovic posted a photo of him and Nadal on the same flight Nadal was flying to the United States. “Vamos,” Djokovic wrote. Game on – at least, in theory.

However, the question is why?

“When he is fit, he wants to play,” his longtime spokesman, Benito Perez-Barbadillo, said on Monday. “He is a tennis player and wants to play in the biggest tournaments. And he loves Indian Wells.”

As Patrick McEnroe, the commentator and former player who called the match against Alcaraz, noted, Nadal often thrives on the slow hard courts of Indian Wells, where he has won three times and reached the final twice.

Injuries during exhibitions are extremely rare, but an exhibition and a hard-court tournament in March, which even Nadal loves as much as Indian Wells, will increase his chances of being fit enough to challenge for the title at the French Open in May and June , where he has won fourteen times and there is a statue outside the stadium of him hitting his forehand with his bull-whip? In recent years, Nadal has locked himself away for about three weeks after Indian Wells to hone his timing and fitness for two months of tennis on clay, where the timing and style of play are markedly different from those on hard courts.

The elephant in the room here is money.

It’s always uncomfortable to count other people’s money, to suggest what should be enough. This is especially the case with professional athletes, whose careers are usually over by age 40 and who have become accustomed to a certain lifestyle.

That said, Nadal has won over $134 million in prize money during his more than two-decade career. He has raised tens of millions, maybe even more, in sponsorships and appearances. The terms of his deal with MGM and MGM’s deal with Netflix are not public, but he will likely collect at least $1 million for the Alcaraz match, given how much he and other players of his caliber have earned for playing similar events.

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Nadal will not receive an appearance fee to play at Indian Wells because it is a mandatory tournament for healthy players. He has different incentives. Larry Ellison, the billionaire founder of Oracle and owner of the tournament, has become a friend and is hosting Nadal at his private resort.

There, Nadal can pursue his other passion: golf. He has been known to play 18 or even 36 holes a day during his time in the desert and has already been to the links in California.


(Sports Image Quality / Getty Images)

It’s a good life. The question is whether he will risk the clay court season, where he probably has the best chance of winning a 23rd Grand Slam title. Nadal would probably try to dismiss that notion, or anything that might indicate he’s some sort of clay court specialist.

“I think it’s fine,” said longtime coach (Roger Federer, Taylor Fritz) and commentator Paul Annacone. ‘He is already in California practicing to get used to it. So the only problem is whether he is not 100 percent. Then don’t go. But I don’t think he would be here in California if he wasn’t close to 100 percent and ready for Indian Wells.”

Days after withdrawing from Doha, Nadal posted a video of himself practicing slow returns, with the caption “Work in progress.” There have been more videos since he arrived in Indian Wells, but no footage of anything remotely intense.

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All of this has only added to the greater mystery surrounding when Nadal will call it quits for good. Last year, not long after his hip surgery, he suggested that 2024 would be his final season and would serve as a farewell tour of sorts, visiting the tournaments and cities that had meant the most to him during his career.

Then, during his three matches in Australia, he showed flashes of his old self and got a taste of the competition he craves. Since then, he has no longer tied himself to a strict timetable, but emphasizes that he takes it day by day.

The Olympic Games tournament will take place this summer at Roland Garros, the location of the French Open. There had been speculation that could serve as his walk-off. He then signed a deal to serve as ambassador to the Tennis Federation of Saudi Arabia and to play in an exhibition in Riyadh in October with Djokovic, Daniil Medvedev, Alcaraz, Jannik Sinner and Holger Rune. That setting seems like a strange choice for his final matches.

A month later the Davis Cup final takes place in Spain. Maybe then? That is, assuming he can get that far without another serious injury.

For now, and for better or worse, he has a big payday in Las Vegas and a hard-court tournament (and lots of golf) in the California desert to focus on.

(Top photo: William West/AFP via Getty Images)

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