WIMBLEDON, England — Finally, after a day of contemplation and attention to what mattered most, health trumped the temptations of yet another title.
On Thursday night, 24 hours after one of the bravest and most grueling endeavors of his career, 22-time Grand Slam champion Rafael Nadal withdrew from his semifinal match against Nick Kyrgios scheduled for Friday.
“I don’t believe I can win two games under these circumstances,” he said. “I cannot serve.”
Nadal made the announcement at a press conference just after 2 p.m. Eastern in the All England Club’s main media conference room, explaining that he was withdrawing due to a tear in his abdominal muscle.
“I’ve been thinking about the decision all day,” he said. “I don’t think there’s any point in going.”
“I am very sad,” he said.
Nadal, who entered the tournament halfway through a Grand Slam and was concerned about his chronically injured foot, said he started feeling pain in his stomach about a week ago. The pain got worse and it became clear that he most likely tore the muscle early in his five-set win over Taylor Fritz in Wednesday’s quarterfinals.
In that match, Nadal took a medical time-out in the second set. From the stands, his father and other members of his family gestured for him to stop playing rather than risk further injury, but Nadal ignored their pleas and achieved one of the most remarkable comeback wins in a career many of them have seen. .
After the game, Nadal warned that he might not be able to play in the semi-finals and that he planned to have a scan to determine the extent of the injury.
“The decision at the end – all decisions – are the decision of the player, but at the same time I have to know different opinions and I have to check everything in the right way, don’t I? That’s even slightly more important than winning Wimbledon, that’s health,” he said. Yet few thought that Nadal, who has played so much of his career with pain, would not at least try to make it to the semi-finals.
The withdrawal – the first of a Wimbledon semi-final in the modern tennis era – was especially disappointing as Nadal’s game got better with each match, something he noted on Thursday and after his win over Fritz, despite this being his first grass tournament in three. year.
“I’m in the semi-finals, so I’ve been playing very well the last few days, especially yesterday, at the beginning of the game, at a very, very high level,” he said.
With Nadal’s withdrawal, Kyrgios gets a pass to his first Grand Slam final. Kyrgios, 27, had never made it to a Grand Slam singles semifinal in a controversial career.
“Different players, different personalities,” Kyrgios wrote of Nadal in a post on Instagram following the announcement. †@Rafael Nadal I hope your recovery is speedy and we hope to see you all healthy soon 🗣🙏🏽 see you next time.”
Nadal had won the first two Grand Slams events of the year, the Australian Open and the French Open† The win over Fritz put him just nine wins away from a Grand Slam calendar year, something no male player has achieved since Rod Laver in 1969.
The withdrawal is the latest blow to a tournament that has taken a rocky road since April, when organizers announced they would bar Russian and Belarusian players of competition due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The organizers made the move under intense pressure from the British government and the Royal Family, who are closely associated with the tournament and did not want Kate, the Duchess of Cambridge, to be photographed performing her traditional task of presenting a trophy. to a Russian or Belarusian champion.
No tournaments outside of Great Britain, including the US Open, have followed Wimbledon’s lead. The decision also sparked a battle with the men’s and women’s professional tours, which decided do not award ranking points for wins at Wimbledon, turning the sport’s most prestigious tournament into an exhibition of sorts.
Things got even more awkward on Thursday when Elena Rybakina, who was born and raised in Russia but started representing Kazakhstan four years ago after the tennis federation offered to fund her development, qualified for the women’s final.
On Thursday night, however, everything else seemed to pale in comparison to the disappointment that Nadal would not be able to come to the field for his clash with Kyrgios, and had he triumphed, a possible 60th game against Novak Djokovic.
Nadal said the injury had caused discomfort for several days, but the pain intensified in the fifth game of the game as he led 3-1. Things got worse a few games later when Fritz broke Nadal’s serve to take the lead.
Nadal said he then changed the way he served, slowing and shifting what is normally a violent twisting motion — the torque of his torso and the strength of his legs — to serve at about 120 miles per hour. During long stretches of the match, Nadal struggled to serve with triple digits.
Still, he resisted his family’s pleas to stop because he wanted to finish what he had started. He defended that decision on Thursday, even though the tournament eventually robbed one of the semifinals.
He called it the right decision ‘because I won the game. I finished the match. I won the match. I did the things I felt in every moment.”
But his willingness to risk his health shifted Thursday, he said, as he saw and felt the size of the tear. He reasoned that it would be impossible to win two more games and that trying would only make the injury worse and cause him to miss more games this summer.
“Very tough circumstances,” he said, pursed his lips with that slight tilt of his head he so often does when he brings bad news.
He said he wouldn’t be able to compete for at least three or four weeks, but he could start hitting from the baseline in just a week and then start serving as soon as he can without discomfort. That’s important for Nadal, as his chronically injured foot often becomes a problem if he isn’t playing for a long time. He can start serving some time after that, assuming he can play without pain.
That timetable, he said, will not disrupt his normal summer schedule, which generally includes hard court tournaments in Canada and Cincinnati before the start of the US Open in late August.
As of now, Djokovic cannot play the US Open due to his refusal to be vaccinated against Covid-19. US policy currently prohibits unvaccinated foreigners from entering the country.
In recent years, Djokovic has become obsessed with finishing his career with the most Grand Slam singles titles. He started the year right with Nadal and Roger Federer at age 20.
Nadal went on to win the first two Grand Slams of the year to get ahead in a race he said he cared little about, something that was somewhat difficult to fathom given his competitive nature on the field.
“As always, luck is more important than any title, even though everyone knows how much effort I put in to be here,” he said.
He also said Thursday night that he has never thought about the pullout that ends his chance at the calendar year Grand Slam, a quest that Djokovic was also obsessed with and that came within one game last year when Nadal missed the second half of the year due to his illness. foot.
“Never thought about the calendar stroke,” he said. “I thought about my daily happiness.”