Rafa Nadal announced on Tuesday that he will be out for between four and six weeks after learning that he suffers a fissure in the third left costal arch, an injury that occurred during his participation in Indian Wells. This ailment forces him to stop at the gates of the start of the most important moment of the season for him: the clay tour. With these times, Nadal will be absent from Montecarlo and Conde de Godó , while his presence at the Mutua Madrid Open is also up in the air. The Balearic could lose up to 860 points in the ranking and give up a good sum of euros for his absence in these tournaments.
“I am depressed and sad because after the start of the season that I have had so good, I reached a very important part of the year with very good feelings and good results”, confessed Rafa Nadal, after announcing that he would be out for between four and six weeks for a fissure in the left third costal arch. The pains became evident during the Indian Wells semi-final match against Carlos Alcaraz and made it very difficult for him to compete in the final against Taylor Fritz.
The injury comes at the worst time, not only because of the brilliant season that the Spaniard was having, with 20 wins and only one loss, but also because it will deprive him of playing a good part of the clay tour. Nadal must be at rest for the next four or six weeks, so he will not be able to go to Monte Carlo -from April 9 to 17-, nor Barcelona -from April 16 to 24- and in the best of cases he would arrive very fair to Madrid -from April 26 to May 9-. If he missed these three tournaments, Nadal would see a total of 860 points automatically subtracted from the ranking, corresponding to his title at the Godó in 2021 (500 points) and the 360 points added from the quarterfinals obtained both in Monte Carlo and in Madrid in the last edition.
860 points… but ensures the Top-5
The amount of money that the Balearic would give up is also important, in a part of the season in which he has won the most prizes throughout his career. In Barcelona last year he pocketed 178,985 euros by winning the title, while the champion in Madrid last year, Alexander Zverev added 315,169 euros.
However, the highest figure that he is forced to give up due to his injury corresponds to Montecarlo, which has recovered the figures it handled before the pandemic. The Monegasque tournament has announced that it will distribute about 5,415,410 euros in total, more than what it offered in 2019 when the winner -Fabio Fognini- received about 935,385 euros, an amount much higher than that given last year to Tsitsipas (251,081 euros) , due to the pandemic and the absence of public in the stands. In total, between the three tournaments, Nadal could have aspired to add about 1,250,000 euros.
Beyond the points and the money, this new injury to Rafa Nadal comes at the worst possible time, depriving him of playing the tournaments in which he has enjoyed the most and leaving his preparation with guarantees for Roland Garros, the main objective of each season for the most successful tennis player in history. “I have always had that spirit of struggle and improvement and what I will do is be patient and work hard after my recovery,” said Nadal, who has a new battle ahead of him to overcome and from which he will return stronger.
