Nadal on Rio Open Hard Courts: "We Already Have Enough Tournaments on Hard Court"

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Nadal on Rio Open Hard Courts: "We Already Have Enough Tournaments on Hard Court"

The Rio Open has been talking about a possible change of venue and surface in the upcoming years, and Rafael Nadal stated his strong opinion on the matter on Friday at Indian Wells.

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Acapulco has already changed from clay to hard, and the tournament had its best year ever this season, with Rafael Nadal, Novak Djokovic and Juan Martin del Potro all competing to make it must-see tennis. But Nadal thinks that the line needs to be drawn in the clay at some point. When asked about it on Friday at Indian Wells, he came out strongly in support of the tournament staying on clay.

Q. I don't know if you know, they are trying to change ATP 1000 for hard court. How do you stand about it in Rio?
RAFAEL NADAL: Well, Rio is a great event, no? Rio on clay, not on hard court, no? We can't change more tournaments to hard. We have enough tournaments on hard. Clay is part of the history of our sport, so we need to hold tournaments on clay and at the same time is the history of Latin America is more on clay than hard, so we need to preserve that, too. And I believe that to be 1000 today is not easy. In 2019, I don't know what will happen, but my feeling is we need to change a little bit the schedule. The weather conditions on that part of the season to fly a tournament there in Rio are too extreme, my opinion. We need to fix more that than other thing.

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