They confirmed the seriousness of Rafael Nadal’s injury: he will be out for six to eight weeks

Rafael Nadal announced this Thursday that he has to stay inactive between six and eight weeks due to an injury to the iliopsoas muscle of the left hip, suffered the previous day during the match that marked his elimination from the Australian Open, against the American Mackenzie McDonald.

“I did the medical tests after yesterday’s defeat. The MRI shows a grade 2 injury on the Iliacus Psoas of the left leg. Now it’s sports rest and anti-inflammatory physiotherapy. Normal recovery time 6 to 8 weeks, “wrote the Spanish tennis player on his Twitter account.

The 36-year-old Manacor player, who defended his 2022 title at Melbourne Park, where he was seeded, underwent the relevant studies this Thursday in a Melbourne hospital, under the supervision of Dr. Ángel Ruiz-Cotorro of la Clínica Teknon, before resuming the road back to his country.

He had suffered the same injury in the quarterfinals of the Australian tournament in 2018, in a match against Marin Cilic.

In this way, Nadal will be absent from the ATP 250 tournaments in Doha and ATP 500 in Dubai, and it is believed that he would not arrive in optimal conditions for the exhibition he had agreed with his compatriot Carlos Alcaraz in early March in Las Vegas, nor at Indian Wells Masters 1000.

Strong statements after the injury

“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.

he spared no adjectives Rafael Nadal to describe his sensations after the injury at the Australian Open, yet another physical setback for the Spanish champion who seems to be at his limit. He used qualifiers like “tired”, “sad”, “disappointed”, “destroyed…”.

At 36 and with her first newborn son, the Spaniard he looked particularly downcast after being knocked out in the second round of the Australian Open, victim of American Mackenzie McDonald and his punished body.

“It hurts as always, but in the end the glass fills up,” he later explained at the press conference. And he added: “In the last three Grand Slams I haven’t been able to finish any of them in good condition: two abdominal tears, here I don’t know what’s happening to the hip …”.

The 22-time Grand Slam champion concluded: “We can come here, put on a brave face – which I do – and accept things – which I do too – but you don’t have to kid yourself and give an optimistic speech when I’m not today.”

The defeat against the American number 65 in the ATP ranking, with partials of 6-4, 6-4 and 7-5, meant that the tennis player from Manacor was eliminated early from one of the four most important tournaments on the circuit from Australia 2016.

IS