“The Uncertainty Surrounding Rafa Nadal’s Return to Tennis Before Roland Garros”

Almost the entire clay court tour of Europe has passed and the winner of 22 Grand Slams has still not been seen. Right now, he is fourteenth in the world ranking and will arrive at his big date without filming, or with very little if he decides to participate in some of the minor tournaments prior to the second big one of the year. Uncertainty continues to surround the future of Rafa Nadal since he has not been able to set the deadlines for his recovery and his subsequent reappearance. The birth of his first child at the end of last year or the death of his mother-in-law a few weeks ago have probably introduced other variables when making sports decisions, although he himself has always expressed his desire to return to the circuit. But he will soon be 37 years old and at that age, long inactivity is a much heavier burden and some tennis players of his generation know it.

Some voices on the circuit continue to think that Nadal will be a favorite at Roland Garros, but the reality may be different. A year ago, the Spaniard arrived in Paris with only five clay-court matches between Madrid and Rome and was still able to lift his fourteenth Musketeers Cup after overcoming tough duels against Felix Auger-Alliasime in the round of 16, Novak Djokovic in the quarterfinals and Alexander Zverev in semifinals. The most worrying thing right now is that Nadal has only played eight matches since the US Open in September, if you don’t count the doubles match he shared with Roger Federer on the day the Swiss withdrew from the Laver Cup. In all this time, the rhythm has been lost and there is hardly any margin to recover it before demanding five-set battles.

Those who trust in Nadal’s possibilities remember that I have already done it before, that he has almost always found his best version at Roland Garros despite the difficulties and facing difficult situations like the one that will await him again this year. It happens that now it is not clear that he is going to play, which would put his career in even greater trouble since he would lose the 2,000 points he had as a winner last year and would fall for the first time in twenty years below the top 100. That has already happened to Andy Murray or Stan Wawrinka, tennis players who in these two decades have challenged the Big Three to add more than one Grand Slam and who had to travel through the Challenge circuit to recover rhythm and points after long periods of injuries already overcome thirty. It is difficult to think that Nadal can follow that path that many of the kids he sees every day at his Manacor Academy have also taken.

Roland Garros, the border

So these weeks can be decisive to unravel the future of Rafa Nadal, who can have a decisive frontier at Roland Garros. The competition is increasing. Djokovic is postulated as the great candidate for the record of the greatest contested because he is being able to decide his calendar, the intermediate generation of Medvedev, Tsitsipas, Zverev, Ruud or Rublev does not want to give up and the new wave represented by Carlos Alcaraz, Holger Rune or Jannick Sinner has broken in with great force.

Precisely, the Murcian will be world number 1 tomorrow just by jumping onto the field in his second round duel of the Masters 1000 in Rome against Albert Ramos. Today he will debut at the Foro Itálico Djokovic, defending champion, against the Argentine Tomás Etcheverry. Meanwhile, Rafa Nadal continues to crush himself in search of recovering his physique so that his head finds the motivation to continue forward.