Rafael Nadal, the former World No. 1 has set his sights on making his comeback. He wants his latest comeback to happen at the start of the clay-court season as he revealed he has “not stopped training at any time.”
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Nadal was anticipated to face Milos Raonic in the first round of the Indian Wells Open earlier this month. However, he pulled out late on the opening day of the tournament.
The 37-year-old was hoping to resume competitive play at the ATP Masters 1000 event, following his participation in the Netflix Slam exhibition against Carlos Alcaraz in Las Vegas on March 3.
Nadal has not not played an ATP event since making a long-awaited comeback at the Brisbane International in January. This is where he suffered the hip injury in his quarter-final loss to Jordan Thompson.
The Spaniard had not played for almost a year before Brisbane. He sustained a hip psoas muscle injury at the 2023 Australian Open, which required arthroscopic surgery.
The 22-time major champion was speaking before the second Rafael Nadal Foundation Awards ceremony in Palma. Speaking at the ceremony, Nadal revealed when he hopes to play again. However, he was cautious about expressing this with certainty given his physical issues.
Rafael Nadal’s Clay Season Hopes and Realities
“I will do my best to try to start the clay season, which is my goal, I am working for that and striving for that goal, but I don’t dare to say anything about what might happen because lately it has been difficult for me to make predictions, unfortunately,” said the Mallorcan.
“I’ve not stopped training at any time. I’m trying all the time. I feel fine, I just haven’t managed to follow the schedule I would have liked to. Hopefully things can change, but as you can imagine, I can’t say because I don’t know myself.”
“It doesn’t matter whether I’m optimistic or not; I’m a realist. For the last year and a half or two it’s been impossible for me to compete, so the first objective is to try to compete and I’m going day by day.”
“If I had to be optimistic or negative, I probably wouldn’t even be trying. It’s a long time, I’m very old and I’ve got a very long career behind me.”
“At the end of the day, I try not to be one thing or the other, I try to go day by day, do the work I have to do to give myself opportunities and we’ll see how long we can try.”
“The reality is that I didn’t feel ready to start playing a tournament at this level, with the little training background I had behind me at the level I needed.”
“I didn’t want to start a tournament coming from where I came from, with no guarantee of being able to advance to at least the levels that I think I need to demand of myself to try and start a tournament.”