when you smile again but your body asks for prudence and not risk

Reef Nadal Smile again. After four months off, the Spanish tennis player has returned to the courts in the Abu Dhabi exhibition tournament, where he lost both matches he played, against Andy murray Y Denis Shapovalov. But, in reality, the result was the least and the important thing was recover sensations, reconnect with tennis and test how his body reacted. He was happy with the test … but, perhaps, not enough to play in the Australian Open.

The Spanish tennis player knows he needs go back step by step to avoid a bigger problem. If Nadal knows something to spare, it is living with injuries, with the pain and physical problems that have caused him, on many occasions, not to have the continuity that he could have otherwise enjoyed. And, despite all this, the results it has achieved make it a one of the best tennis players in history. Where he would have gone without so much injury is something we will never know.

But, possibly, one of the problems that has given him the most in his career is the enfermedad de Müller-Weiss. “It is a chronic problem in which a bone in the foot, the navicular, suffers from dysplasia and is complicated, especially in elite athletes. In the scaphoid the posterior tibial muscle is inserted, which is the one that controls the pronation gestures. It begins with a lack of blood supply, which weakens the bone, and leads to small fractures, “Dr. David Rodríguez Sanz, an expert in sports injuries and professor at the Faculty of Nursing, Physiotherapy and Podiatry at the Complutense University of Madrid, explained to El Confidencial.

That problem appeared in 2004, when Nadal I was only 19 years old, although he would not be diagnosed until 2005, when he suffered a new injury to his left foot. Since then, it has been one of his achilles heels and probably the most difficult situation of his career. Not only because I can remove that problem when I was just starting to play, but also because a good part of the rest of derived ailments, like back or knees, may come from there.

This chronic injury is causing additional problems due to the support on the track, which have to be corrected with templates and, obviously, with changes in the routines of treading, braking and, even, hitting. It is a much bigger problem than can be believed at first and one that has suffered a complication again in August of this course. That situation has made him undergo surgery and, after four months without competing, now he can finally play again.

It is for that reason that Nadal is happy with his return to the slopes after a long absence, but he is aware that his approach to high competition must be done gradually. Force the first to change can not only cause a relapse, but at 35 years of age a new injury to that battered foot it can be definitive. This is precisely why value the option of not playing in Australia, something that has yet to decide.

“I need to talk to my team and make a decision. I cannot 100% guarantee my participation in the Australian Open. My plan is to go there and do my best. That is my goal and that is the idea, but I have to see how the body feels after these couple of days. I have some time to make this decision. We will have it clearer as the days go by, “he explained after the game against Shapovalov. The option of not being in Melbourne is really plausible.

This situation may cause none of the ‘big three’ to play the first Grand Slam of the season. Roger Federer, injured, is safe; Nadal could resign … and Novak Djokovic, with his fight with vaccines, he could also miss the tournament. The Balearic knows that he is to a ‘great’ to be the best of all time, but in no rush to return. And it is that, perhaps, that of being the best does not go in the record, but in the character of a winner like Nadal.

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