It will have taken Rafa Nadal almost a complete turn of the calendar, a total of 347 days, to reappear on the courts, after putting behind him the most lasting injury of his long professional career. The tennis player from Manacor (37) has announced his return to competition for the ATP 250 tournament in Brisbane, which will be played from December 31 to January 7, as a prelude to the first major of the 2024 season.
“After a year out of competition, the time has come to return. It will be in Brisbane, and it will be the first week of January. See you there”, the Balearic tennis player announced his return yesterday on the X account (Twitter) with a video summarizing his will and his path to get here.
“I think I don’t deserve to end up like this; I believe that I have worked hard enough throughout my sports career so that my end will not be here today in a press conference”, recalled the fragment of his intervention before the media on May 18, when he announced from of his Manacor Academy that was starting an indefinite stoppage to recover from the iliac psoas injury, while confessing that 2024 would be his last year as a professional, when he would be 38 years old.
Rafa Nadal played his last match on January 18, in the second round of the Australian Open, when he lost to young American Mackenzie McDonald after injuring his hip in the second set. The Balearic was able to complete the match, but due to the injury he no longer reappeared on a court. He initially gave up some of his favorite tournaments such as Monte Carlo, the Godó Trophy, Madrid and Rome, in order to make it to Roland Garros in time, but neither. It was then that he announced his momentary farewell, at that press conference in Manacor.
After undergoing hip surgery at the Teknon clinic in Barcelona on June 2, a day after his 37th birthday, the Mallorcan tennis player has been training regularly since October on the courts of the Manacor Academy .
The intention of Nadal, currently number 663 in the ATP ranking (the lowest since April 2002, when he had only been a professional for seven months), is to pick up the pace of the game in an attempt to contest the first Grand Slam of the ‘year, the Australian Open, from January 14 to 28.
Most likely, at the tournament in Brisbane, the tennis player from Manacor will receive a wild card (invitation) from the organization, since he is currently out of the ranking to participate in the ATP 250 tournament. Similarly, the manacorí will not be among the 32 series leaders of the Australian tournament, for the qualcosa could find his great rival, the world number one, Novak Djokovic, in the first crossings.
The schedule of the Balearic tennis player in his return – and in what will be his last active season as a professional – will depend on the physical sensations he experiences. His priority, based on accumulated experience, has been not to shorten recovery periods. Which he did not always respect, and it cost him relapses and missing big appointments, such as the stress fracture in his left foot in 2004, which had him out for three months and prevented him from making his debut at Roland Garros.
Now, in his 17th return to competition after injuries, Rafa Nadal’s big challenges are to regain his competitive tone and get fit for Roland Garros (May 20 to June 9), where he aims to win his 15th trophy (which would shoot up his absolute record), and qualify for the Olympic Games in Paris (July 27 to August 4), on the same stage of the Bois de Boulogne, where he dreams of playing doubles with Carlos Alcaraz and hang the third Olympic medal after the golds in Beijing and Rio de Janeiro.
Currently, Rafa Nadal is the second male tennis player with more Grand Slams, 22, surpassed this year by Novak Djokovic (24).
