The Balearic faces abdominal discomfort this Friday and the histrionic Kyrgios in search of his third final in a ‘big’ this year
MADRID, 7 Jul. (EUROPA PRESS) –
The Spanish tennis player Rafa Nadal faces this Friday the semifinals of the Wimbledon tournament, the third ‘Grand Slam’ of the season, against the histrionic Australian player Nick Kyrgios and the abdominal pains that have weighed down his game and were close to knocking him out of the London tournament in the quarterfinal against Taylor Fritz.
Nadal has exhausted the vocabulary to describe his legendary work. In front of Fritz she demonstrated again how high she sets his pain threshold. “I thought several times about withdrawing,” confessed the Balearic after defeating Fritz after a tough battle of almost 4 and a half hours on the grass of the All England Club.
Despite the gestures of his father, Sebastiá, and his sister María Isabel inviting him to stop his ordeal, the man from Manacor returned to the track after being treated by the physiotherapist for that abdominal gap that hardly allowed him to serve beyond 180 kilometers per hour. “I have not taken out for several days to protect the abdomen,” revealed Francis Roig’s pupil.
And not only did he return, but he also overcame that ballast and the lashes of the lanky Fritz to continue enlarging his legendary figure at Wimbledon, despite his three-year absence since it is the surface that least adapts to his topspin and deep balls that so much It’s hard to lift your rivals.
He returned to the field because withdrawal is not in his vocabulary, two steps away as it is in one stride. Two games from a final in which he can add his 23 ‘Grand Slam’, and the third in the same course after those of Australia and Roland Garros. Two steps away from that stride, since he would only have to win in the United States to become the only tennis player – along with the Australian Rod Laver – to win the four majors in the same season in the Open Era.
But first he will have to face the first step against ‘Bad Boy’ Kyrgios, with whom he has already had cross talks and incidents in previous games. The balance is favorable for the Spaniard, who has defeated the Australian in the last three matches and dominates 6-3 on aggregate, including two wins at Wimbledon.
This Thursday the Balearic will undergo tests and an ultrasound in the abdominal region supervised by his doctor, Ángel Ruiz Cotorro, his shadow this week in London, where the pain in his foot on the clay of Roland Garros has ceased to give way to the of his torso. “There is something more important than winning Wimbledon, which is health,” Nadal said. Nadal is eternal, but he wants to be even more so. The Balearic is now torn between that physical pain and the legend that continues, that does not stop.