That’s how he is Nadal universe, so fixed, so conservative and at the same time so changing, so solid and so fickle at the same time; built on that tagline to which the tennis player, already a thousand and one exhibitions, countless press conferences, frequently resorts: “In sport, everything can change very quickly,” he usually repeats, snapping his fingers, coming to say that what Today it is black, tomorrow it can be white and the next day green, or round when shortly before it looked square. Open message, sometimes enigmatic, skillfully slipped—if there is no intervention involved—so as not to get your fingers caught; It can be intuited, smelled and presupposed, but literally in hand, it is difficult and rare for it to fall into renunciation. Few slips. And for some time now he has been warning: he will leave it, perhaps soon. Or maybe not. The answer surely depends on his body, because if it were up to him, I would return to Paris, his Paris, as many times as he has visited it.
He warns now, in Spanish and English: “As I said, there is a good chance that this will be my last Roland Garros, but if I have to say one hundred percent that it is the last, I’m sorry, but I won’t do it; I can’t predict what’s going to happen. “I don’t want to close the door one hundred percent.” And immediately afterwards he reasons before some 150 expectant journalists, amidst eagerness, yes or no?: “First, because now I am enjoying it. Second, because I am traveling with my family (I became a father two years ago) and they are also enjoying themselves. And third, because I have not yet been able to adequately explore whether I will be able to play in better or worse health conditions, without limitations. So give me time. Maybe in a month or a month and a half I will say: okaythat’s enough, I can’t go on, but somehow today I can’t say that it will be the last, even though there is a good chance that it will be that way.”
With no resolution yet, Nadal is actually holding the line. His line. Not perhaps with respect to what he said in December in an interview given to The weekly country, in which he stated that at this point in the film he would already know the outcome, whether he would hang up his racket or continue forward. But basically yes, no matter how many ellipses continue, the yes or no, who knows. Even he does not know. He seems, but he is not. And now, when it was presumed – from the outside – that this Roland Garros was going to be the last, perhaps it is not. “In Madrid (where he was honored) I did say it, there I closed a circle, but here it is different. I have missed out on playing some events (Australia, Indian Wells or Monte Carlo, for example) that I would have liked to play, so next year, making a different calendar… I have to explore how far I can go. And if I continue to feel better, we’ll see what happens,” he explains.
What is happening today does respond to the open door that he left in the (open) announcement he made in May of last year in Manacor, when his body seemed to be leading him towards a final goodbye and forced him to stop once again, and even to pass through the operating room. He then indicated that he would make one last effort to say goodbye as he wanted, on the track and competing, and not in a press room: “I don’t think I deserve to end like this, I want my ending to be another way.” And he anticipated the intention, just that, the intention. “I will try to face next year with guarantees of what I believe will be the last of my sporting career.” However, the insinuations have not been accompanied in almost any case (except Madrid) by confirmation. It didn’t happen in Barcelona, his club — “the normal thing is that it is (the last Godó), I have played it like that, but you never know what the future will bring” — nor later in Rome — “I never said that this was going to be my last tournament here”—.
The ball, priority again
The fact is that Nadal does not close doors and continues, because his physique allows him to do so today; a gear that in recent times responds better, according to what the protagonist conveys, mentioned in tomorrow’s premiere with the gigantic Alexander Zverev, number four in the world. “I found out while playing Parcheesi,” he details. “He has had one of the worst draws, but in some way I expected it,” he clarifies with resignation, accepting the toll taken for not being seeded. “I am happy doing what I do. I’m not training with too much pain. The limitation that I felt a few weeks ago took away my enthusiasm, but now I have less, or few, and if that lasts over time I can continue to be competitive. I don’t want to be left with the feeling of having only tried it for a week. If I had been able to do it since January and I hadn’t achieved it, it would be different, but I don’t want to be left with doubt,” he conveys.
The Mallorcan, who will turn 38 on June 3, has only been able to play 11 matches this season, eight on clay. However, what yesterday looked rather bleak today is no longer so, and when the crossing with Zverev – recent winner at the Foro Italico – pointed to the worst of fortunes, perhaps it could now mean a turning point.
“I go day by day, but I don’t close the door to anything either. I don’t have enough of a scale to be able to say if I’m competitive right now. I haven’t really had the concentration, the automatisms and everything that you build over the weeks. I’ve played very limited so far, with hip and abdominal problems… And that affects your daily performance, but I’ve had a different feeling for a week or so, and that excites me. “Whatever may happen is a utopia, but if I didn’t have a minimum of hope, I wouldn’t be here.” “It doesn’t mean that on Monday I’m going to play in an incredible way, but this place is magical for me; Many things have happened that were difficult to imagine. So I still have the motivation and a little hope to play well.”
The training sessions these days express that the evolution is positive, and the only but What the tennis player finds is that the rebound may have come too late. “The shame is that we are very close to the start, because it is the first week that I feel free, thinking about how to play the ball and little else; “I have been thinking for a long time about what movements I could do and which ones I couldn’t, and that mentally undermines you,” he laments. But now, suddenly, light enters where there was none, and the future remains an unknown: yes but no, I’m leaving or maybe not: “Maybe this will be the last Roland Garros. Or maybe not.”
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