Nadal’s reign in Paris — full of flexed biceps, forehand winners and underrated court craft — is one of the great achievements in any sport.
In case, in this distracted era, you only have time to read the first paragraph on your phone, here is the essential from Rafael Nadal: No French Open this year for the first time since 2004; no retirement just yet.
But there is, of course, much more to Nadal’s story, particularly at Roland Garros, the Grand Slam tournament he has dominated like no player has dominated any tennis major.
His 14 singles titles still look like a typo even for those like me who have watched him build that probably unbreakable record, red brick by red brick.
“When you play Roland Garros 14 times you tell yourself you had a good career,” the French veteran Nicolas Mahut said in an interview with L’Équipe. “When you win 14 matches there, that’s not too bad at all. When you get to the second week 14 times you are one of the great players. And when you win the title 14 times, there is no way to comprehend that. There are no words.”
Though Nadal is Spanish, even the French Open organizers buckled under the weight of all the hardware and erected a shimmering, larger-than-life statue of Nadal just inside the main entrance of the tournament grounds.
His reign in Paris — full of flexed biceps, forehand winners and underrated court craft — is one of the great achievements in any sport, and though a 15th title is a long shot at this late stage, all we know for certain is that Nadal will not be winning it this year.
He announced his withdrawal from this year’s French Open at a news conference on Thursday in his home city of Manacor at his eponymous academy: another monument to his tennis excellence.
Dressed in jeans and a white, short-sleeved shirt, Nadal, who will turn 37 on June 3, explained calmly and at length that he had lost his latest race against time: failing to recover sufficiently from a core muscle injury he suffered in January at the Australian Open to play.
“It’s not a decision that I made, it’s a decision that my body made,” he said.
Nadal, still interested in playing only when he has a chance to win, will stop practicing through the pain for an extended period, likely several months. He did not rule out returning to competition later in 2023 — mentioning the Davis Cup Finals that will be held in Malaga, Spain, in November — but above all he is aiming to return for what he said was “probably” going to be his final season in 2024.
“I don’t want to put myself in a position to say one thing and then do another thing, but my goal and my ambition is to try to stop to give myself an opportunity to enjoy next year,” he said, sighing audibly midsentence as if he was fighting himself to talk about the finish line.
