By Chris Oddo | Friday May 27, 2016
Rafael Nadal has sent shockwaves through Paris, announcing that he has pulled out of Roland Garros with a left wrist injury.
Photo Source: Getty
Rafael Nadal sent tremors through the Roland Garros grounds when he announced his withdrawal from the tournament, leaving his third-round opponent, Marcel Granollers, as the first man to reach the round of 16.
The nine-time Roland Garros champion says that his left wrist began to ail him in Madrid, and it has steadily become worse since then.
“I'm here to announce that I have to retire from the tournament because I have a problem in my wrist that I have had a couple of weeks,” Nadal said. “Every day that happens is stronger, and I arrived here with a little bit of pain but something that I think I was able to manage. Every day was a little bit worse. We tried to do all the treatments possible. Every single day we spent a lot of hours here working so hard to try to play. Yesterday I played with an injection on the wrist, with anesthetic, just to [numb] my wrist, to play.”
Nadal, who lost just nine games in his first two rounds, says he woke up on Friday and could barely move his wrist.
“I could play, but the thing is yesterday night I started to feel more and more pain, and today in the morning I feel that I could not move much the wrist,” he said. “So I came here, I did MRI, and I did echography.”
He said the wrist will not require surgery, but if he continued to play this week, surgery would have been the likely outcome. “The results are not positive,” he said. “The real thing is not 100%, you know. It's not broken, but if I keep playing it gonna be broken next couple of days. Every day the image is a little bit worse.”
Nadal, who had bolstered his hopes of reclaiming the Roland Garros title with titles in Monte-Carlo and Barcelona this season, says it was pointless to him to continue. “When I am coming to Roland Garros, I am coming thinking about winning the tournament,” he said. “To win the tournament I need five more matches, and the doctor says that's 100 percent impossible. That gonna be 100 percent broken.”
Nadal was referring to a part of the tendon in his left wrist, not a bone. “I cannot say in English because I don't know exactly the name. Is I think is the sheath of the tendon,” he said.
Nadal said he felt the injury in Madrid against Joao Sousa for the first time.
“I felt something against Sousa in Madrid,” he said. “Next day in Madrid against Andy I played with mesotherapy to [numb] a little bit the [area] and to have less pain, and worked because I could play.”
Nadal said he travelled to Barcelona after the tournament for tests and it was determined he could play Rome. He played with medication in Rome but began to experience even more pain while practicing at home in Mallorca prior to Roland Garros.
“When I arrived here, every day is worse,” he said. “I cannot play with my forehand. That's the real thing.”
The 14-time major champ, who turns 30 on June 3, became the eighth player in history to win 200 matches at the Grand Slam level on Thursday in Paris.
He says he hopes to return to action by Wimbledon.
“We expect to recover quickly, to be ready for Wimbledon, no?” he said. “But at this moment, you know, it's not a moment to talk about that. It's just a moment to go day by day, to work hard. I hope to have a fast recovery.”