“The day my career ends I won’t know what to do, I won’t be a happy boy,” Rafael Nadal once said. And the end of the tunnel seems to be getting closer. “I’m mentally destroyed,” declared the Spaniard in his first defeat. “The glass is filling up,” Rafa warned.

“Tired”, “sad”, “disappointed”, “destroyed…”. Rafael Nadal spared no adjectives to describe his feelings after the injury at the Australian Open, yet another physical setback for the Spanish champion who seems to be at his limit.

Elbow, shoulder, hand, back, hip, foot, abs and now the hip too: injuries have been a constant in Nadal’s career, but he has become a specialist in suffering, recovery and perseverance.

But, at 36 and with her first child just bornthe Spaniard looked especially dejected after being knocked out in the second round of the Australian Open, a victim of American Mackenzie McDonald and his battered body.

“It hurts as always, but in the end the glass fills up,” he later explained at the press conference.

“It’s evident that things are happening and in sporting terms the glass fills up and the time comes when the water can come out,” he added.

Just a year ago, the Spaniard achieved a feat in Melbourne: after months of absence from the slopes due to a chronic foot problem, Nadal retained the title after recovering from an epic final loss against the Russian Daniil Medvedev.

With 21 Grand Slam tournaments, He became the man with the biggest in historya milestone he later extended with his 14th victory on clay at Roland Garros.

But when the best Nadal seemed to return, the ghost of injuries reappeared on the grass at Wimbledon in July with an abdominal tear.

With obvious signs of pain and with his father telling him to get out of the standsNadal held on to beat American Taylor Fitz in the quarterfinals, but threw in the towel the following day before playing the semifinals.

“There was no point in playing if I want to continue my career“, said then Nadal, who continued to limp in late August during the US Open, where he lost in the round of 16 to American Frances Tiafoe.

“I haven’t been able to finish the last three Grand Slams in good condition: two abdominal tears, here I don’t know what happened to the hip. We can come here and put on a nice face and accept things (…) but we don’t even have to get to trick”.

“I’m tired, I’m sad, I’m disappointed, all of this is a reality. From here, I assume that when things move forward, the appropriate decisions will be made because what I want is to continue playing tennis,” he added.

So much so that he didn’t want to leave the Rod Laver Arena.

With his wife weeping in the stands, Nadal briefly retired to the locker room to receive medical treatment and, while unable to run or barely hitting a backhand, he held on until the end of the duel against McDonald (6-4, 6-4 , 7-5).

“I didn’t want to retire as defending champion here,” he said. “I tried to keep playing without increasing the damage. I couldn’t backhand at the end. I couldn’t run for the ball. But I just wanted to finish the game.”

In the midst of the suffering that forced him to be mistreated throughout the game, Rafa got nervous about the little time he had to get the towel before returning to take service: “The towel is there and I always see the ‘clock going 5 , 4…”, Rafa complained.

And then he grabbed it with the judge of the chair, “It’s always the same with you, it doesn’t matter.” The situation was repeated in several passages of the match. “We need someone to bring us towels, they’re a long way away. Why can’t the ball boys bring us towels?” insisted Rafa, who usually uses dozens of towels to wipe his sweat at every game.

While awaiting the details of the injury, Nadal is confident he can get back on track soon. In 2021 he sat out his season midway through a sore foot and has now arrived in Melbourne with few games in recent months due to an abdominal tear.

“I hope I don’t have to spend a lot of time outdoors again because, in the end, it’s very difficult to get back in shape (…) When you have breaks all the time it becomes really difficult and even more so at an advanced age,” he said.

But despite his 36 years and his body battered by injuries, Nadal still doesn’t want to follow the path of his opponent and friend Roger Federer, with whom he shared his tears at retirement after one last doubles match together in September.

“It’s very simple: I like what I do. I like playing tennis. I know it’s not forever”, but “when you like something, sacrifice makes sense”. “When you like what you do, at the end of the day, it’s not a sacrifice.”

With information from AFP, agencies and social networks