Return of the kings

Reef Nadal returned this Friday to the competition in the Mubadala World Tennis Championship, a tournament of exhibition in Abu Dhabi that, due to its strange situation in the calendar, could well be considered the closure of one course or the prologue of the next. The news was Nadal’s comeback after 132 day recovery of a chronic injury to the left foot. The Balearic lost to Andy murray, in a duel with an old flavor between two former world number 1s, two illustrious people who know well what it means to reign in tennis, and also the troubles of the injuriess. Murray, who now occupies 134th place in the ATP, plays with a prosthetic hip and at the time he officially announced his retirement from the slopes. Champions are not only measured by the brightness of their trophy rooms, but also by how many times they have fallen and managed to get back up. There is another related example in this weekend: Tiger Woods, another sports legend battered by physical and emotional problems, returns this weekend in another gig, ten months after a serious car accident.

Even if the presence in the stands of Juan Carlos I, the king emeritus, in the middle of the debate on his return to Spain, he overshadowed the sporting essence of the event in the general media, the true return of the king was that of Nadal, that although he could not beat his old rival on the court, he did come out with good feelings after more than four months of recovery. Rafa explained in the previous press conference that during “almost all” his career he has played with pain, so the goal is not to eliminate him one hundred percent, he never succeeded, but “To be able to handle it to compete well”. That would allow his official comeback in Australia, in January, with the first big one in the spotlight. The return of Nadal It is here, but the return of the tennis monarch has yet to wait. There is a road ahead.