After a year off the courts, Rafael Nadal will be back in competition in late December at the Brisbane International presented by Evie. After an operation on his psoas muscle and a lingering hip issue, the 22-time Grand Slam champion set out on the long road to recovery with his sights set on a 2024 return, and the opportunity to bring an end to his legendary career while battling it out on a tennis court.
Having recently returned from Kuwait, where they practised for a few days with Arthur Fils, and before heading for Australia, Carlos Moyà, the Spaniard’s coach, sat down with ATPTour.com for an exclusive discussion about the most difficult time in the Mallorcan’s career.
Could you break down what has happened in the past few months, from Nadal’s decision to have an operation to the latest training sessions, with a mind to return to competition in Brisbane?
It’s what comes with an operation that requires complete rest. He had a more complicated operation than was first expected. Once they opened him up and saw what was there, it was more delicate than they had first thought. It’s not that he didn’t have tests and scans... but it seems that they didn’t have a good idea of the problem and the recovery period was longer than expected.
It's also true that if he hadn’t had the operation, it would’ve been even more difficult for him to recover. He always knew he wanted to come back and that he wanted to say his goodbye on court.
After the operation... it was a month and a half of practically not seeing him, because he went on holiday. He was doing rehab as much as he could, given that he was on the boat in Greece. Then, at the end of August, we started to train, but very lightly. We would do two days a week, twenty minutes. It was a very slow progression. Sometimes we would take a step back, then go again... We were always very careful.
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