Rafael Nadal won't be playing Dubai or Doha this month.
The 22-time Grand Slam champion is not on the entry list of either next week's Qatar ExxonMobil Open or the Dubai Duty Free Tennis Championships, starting on February 27th as he continues recovery from a left hip injury he sustained at the Australian Open.
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American Mackenzie McDonald dethroned hobbled defending champion Nadal 6-4, 6-4, 7-5 in an Australian Open second-round shocker last month. It was Nadal's earliest Grand Slam exit since he fell to Fernando Verdasco in the 2016 AO opening round.
The top-seeded Spaniard suffered a left hip injury chasing a ball in the eighth game of the second set. Nadal went down suffering and fighting.
The next day, Nadal announced he'll miss approximately six to eight weeks, which ruled him out of Dubai and puts his status for Indian Wells, which starts on March 8th, in question.
“I have carried out medical tests after the defeat yesterday,” Nadal wrote on Twitter last month. “The MRI shows a grade 2 lesion in the Iliacus Psoas of his left leg. Now it's sports rest and anti-inflammatory physiotherapy. Normal recovery time 6 to 8 weeks.”
The iliopsoas muscle is the major flexor of the joint. It's made up of three muscles: the iliacus, the psoas major, and the psoas minor. These are the muscles that work together to flex the hip, as well as stabilize it, and lower back.
Nadal is scheduled to face Carlos Alcaraz in a Las Vegas exhibition event at the MGM Grand on March 5th. Though that seems in jeopardy, tickets for the exhibition are still on sale. If Nadal recovers in time to play Indian Wells then it's possible he could attempt to play the Las Vegas exhibition to tune-up for the BNP Paribas Open.
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