By Chris Oddo | @TheFanChild | Sunday May 1, 2022
Rafael Nadal had trouble breathing, let alone walking in the weeks after he picked up a stress fracture to his rib at Indian Wells, which explains why the Spaniard is in such good spirits at Madrid, where he is free of the injury and ready to pick up his 2022 season after nearly two months away from the competitive court.
“I'm recovered. I feel good,” Nadal told reporters on Sunday at Madrid. “Talking about my tennis game and preparations, well, it's a completely different story. Anyone who has broken a rib knows how limiting it is, very painful, especially the first weeks. I wasn't able to do anything with a lot of difficulties even to fall asleep even because of the pain, but after that, little by little I was able to go a little bit to the gym.”
The King of Clay, a five-time champion at Madrid, has a difficult road ahead of him this week. After a bye he is slated to face either Miomir Kecmanovic or Alexander Bublik in his first match of the clay season. Kecmanovic, at 22-9 on the season, is playing some of the best tennis of his life.
Nadal isn’t too worried about things, however. He’s just happy to be back on the court without pain again. He told reporters he is doing everything he can to make up for lost time, and that he feels a bit like he is in preseason mode again.
“I'm trying to face these days like a little bit of preseason,” he said. “I'm very, very tight for this tournament in terms of preparation, right? I haven't had the time for the preparation, and that's the way I have to face it.
“It's a very tight tournament for me. We will have to take the positive things and perhaps I will have good moments playing on court. … We have to have some patience. We have to be humble day after day to see what happens, try to improve day after day.”
Nadal said he took four weeks off before he resumed training two weeks ago. It’s not an ideal situation for him to come into on his beloved clay, but he will make the best of it, as he always has done in the past when faced with injuries.
“It's been six weeks of which I started to train two weeks ago,” he said. “First week I was just training half an hour per day, and very, very gently, very softly, and, well, it didn't come, but I have a lot of joy to come here again. I'm very happy, excited. We still have a couple of days where -- today is Sunday? Yeah, Sunday. I still have Monday and Tuesday to be able to recover.
“I have improved compared to when I came here, but I still have ups and downs, because it's been a long time without being in these kinds of situations and it's going to be a difficult week, for sure. That's the reality. So we have to be calm, we have to accept that things are going to be far away from perfection, but then onwards we just have to fight.”