Tennis player Rafael Nadal will miss the Indian Wells tournament

Former world number one Rafael Nadal will not be able to compete at the BNP Paribas Open, an Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) Masters 1000 tournament with a prize fund of $9.5 million, which began in Indian Wells. Having played an exhibition match with his compatriot Carlos Alcaraz last Sunday in Las Vegas, the famous Spaniard said that he was not ready to participate in an official competition.

Rafael Nadal announced his refusal to participate in the BNP Paribas Open, a prestigious tournament that started on Wednesday on the courts of Indian Wells, a small resort town in California. According to the 37-year-old Spaniard, despite the great work done recently, he is not ready to compete at an important competition, which, by the way, he won in 2007, 2009 and 2013, and does not want to deceive either himself or the fans.

Nadal did not provide specific reasons for his decision. It is possible that this is a new problem, although it is possible that Nadal was unable to recover from another muscle injury received in January in Brisbane shortly before the Australian Open. Let us remember that Nadal then returned to the court after a 12-month break, won two matches, but lost in the quarterfinals to Australian Jordan Thompson, who was ranked 55th in the world at that time.

BNP Paribas Open director and former world number two Tommy Haas could not hide his disappointment with Nadal’s decision. He wished the Spaniard a speedy recovery and expressed hope to see him at the tournament next season. However, now there are big doubts about this.

As you know, in May last year, at a press conference specially convened on the occasion of his refusal to participate in the French Open, Nadal unequivocally made it clearthat he intends to say goodbye to tennis in 2024.

And although the 22-time Grand Slam winner later claimed in several interviews that nothing had been decided yet, today the option of ending his career in the coming months looks the most realistic.

Nadal’s first public appearance in three months was the tennis veteran’s Netflix Slam against Carlos Alcaraz last Sunday. According to the resource tennis-infinity.com, the price of tickets in the front rows near the court, built in the 12,000-seat Michelob ULTRA Arena, reached $3 thousand, and each participant received $1 million as a fee.

Watching this meeting, which ended with Alcaraz winning a super tiebreaker played instead of the third game, tennis experts agreed that Nadal was not fully ready for serious performances. This, in particular, was noted by the former world number one American Jim Courier.

Moreover, on Wednesday, during a training session in Indian Wells, which took place not on the central court, but on one of the training courts, Nadal, according to the resource lobandsmash.com, could not execute the serve motion properly. Soon after this, his statement about his withdrawal from the tournament followed.

The timing of the return to competitive practice of one of the most titled tennis players in the world is unknown.

In any case, he was not announced in advance at the Miami Open presented by Itau, the next ATP tournament of the Masters 1000 category, which will be held from March 20 to 31. Then the clay season, so beloved by Nadal, begins on the ATP calendar, the key competitions of which will be the tournaments in Monte- Carlo (April 7–14), Barcelona (April 15–21), Madrid (April 24–May 5), Rome (May 8–19) and, of course, Roland Garros (May 26–June 9).

But so far it has only been officially announced that the Spaniard included among the six participants in the 6 Kings Slam, an exhibition tournament that will be held in October in Saudi Arabia, where each tennis player will receive a minimum of 1.5 million, and the winner will receive 6 million.

Evgeniy Fedyakov