“I’m not seeded, I’m the age I am.” Ahead of his first official singles match in almost a year, Tuesday against Dominic Thiem at the ATP tournament in Brisbane, Rafael Nadal said he was ready to return to competition but calmed his enthusiasm.
“It has been a year. There was surgery, it was a long period without being able to train at a decent level,” recalled the Spaniard during a press conference on Sunday in Australia.
“For me, knowing how things are going to go is a little unpredictable. Competition is different from training,” he added.
At 37, the former world No.1 with 22 Grand Slam titles has not played singles since his defeat in the second round of the Australian Open on January 18, 2023, handicapped by a hip injury. .
After two operations, months of rehabilitation and a dip in the rankings (he is 672nd in the ATP), Nadal benefited from an invitation to enter directly into the main draw and says he experienced good sensations during his training in Brisbane .
For the moment, however, there is no question of planning specific objectives or even confirming whether 2024, as he suggested, could be his last season. Just seeing how his body, bruised by injuries from 22 years spent on the courts, will hold up, and enjoying the pleasure of playing again.
“I am aware that things are not going to go well, that it is almost impossible for them to go well” in Brisbane, he told El Pais. “I’m not seeded, I’m the age I am,” he told the Spanish daily, adding that he would take stock before Roland-Garros, his clay garden where he won 14 times.
The simple fact of playing again is a first victory for him who says he considered stopping everything, surrounded by doubts about the opportunity to return.
“If I thought about retirement during this time? Yes of course. Does it make sense to do all this at 37 years old…,” he told reporters in Brisbane.
“I want to feel like I can step on the court and compete with anyone,” he added. It doesn’t matter in the end if I won or if I lost, as long as I found that feeling…”
A duel of ghosts
In the meantime, after 347 days of absence, he finally played again this weekend in the doubles tournament. Associated with his compatriot and co-coach Marc Lopez, with whom he won Olympic gold in Rio in 2016, he logically lost to Australian specialists Jordan Thompson and Max Purcell 6-4, 6-4. But he appeared sharp and mobile on the court and the smile that lit up his face as he left Pat Rafter Arena said a lot about his desire.
The real return will be Tuesday, in singles.
The draw chose as his opponent another serious burner on the circuit, the Austrian Dominic Thiem, whom he beat twice in the final at Roland-Garros, in 2018 and 2019.
The last of their 15 confrontations (Nadal leads 9 wins to 6) dates back to the end of the 2020 season, during the group stage of the Masters. Thiem won in two tie-breaks.
Since then, the career of the former world No.3 has unraveled, the fault of an injury to his right wrist which caused him to fall to 352nd place in the world in mid-2022.
The winner of the 2020 edition of the US Open slowly climbed back up the slope, re-entering the Top 100 (at the start of the 2024 season, he is ranked 98th in the world) but had to work hard to escape from the qualifying in Brisbane.
Facing the Australian James McCabe, he even came very close to the door, trailing 2-6, 3-5, 0-40 in a match interrupted by the irruption of a venomous snake on the court.
