Rafa Nadal will not participate in either Wimbledon or the Tokyo Olympics. A tile on the Championships, which start next week with the qualifiers and have obtained to play the finals with the full capacity of the Center Court (15,000 spectators). After the parenthesis of Roland Garros, after a few days of rest, the Spanish champion will prepare the American trip that will culminate at the end of August with the US Open.
“It is never an easy decision to make,” writes Nadal. “But after listening to my body and discussing with my team, I realized that it is the right decision, with the aim of prolonging my career and continuing to do what makes me happy, which is to compete at the highest level and keep fighting. for my professional and personal goals at the highest level of competitiveness. The fact that there were only two weeks between Roland Garros and Wimbledon this year didn’t make it easier to recover from the ever-demanding clay season. It has been two months of great commitment and the decision I have made is focused on the medium and long term.
Preventing any kind of excess for my body is a very important factor at this stage of my career, just to try to keep fighting at the highest level. I want to send a special message to my fans around the world, to those in the UK and Japan in particular. The Olympic Games have always meant a lot in my career and have always been a priority both as a sportsman and as a fan. Personally, I had the opportunity to experience three of them and I also had the honor of being the standard-bearer of my country ».
A relatively important consequence of Nadal’s resignation is that Matteo Berrettini will be seeded number 8 at Wimbledon. On the Championships, among other things, the shadow of the poor condition shown in Halle by Federer, where he came out, has lengthened. in the second round defeated by Felix Auger-Aliassime. “This is not the time to make rash decisions or decisions dictated by moment and emotion,” said Roger, hinting at the despondency and perhaps for the first time a substantial doubt about his chances of being competitive at the age of 40 (li will be on 8 August). «The quality of my tennis is returning, but my level is still a bit too fluctuating. In the end my body language was not positive, but there are no physical problems, only those problems related to the difficulty of returning to competitions. I was then disappointed with how things were going: I began to think that it was not my day, that I could not do anything to reverse the situation and this usually does not happen to me. Now I just have to think about Wimbledon and try to do better and better ».
After the triumph in Paris, and with these premises at Wimbledon, 2021 seems increasingly to be the year of Djokovic who can now really aim for the Grand Slam.