Two Grand Slam titles, victories at the Masters events in Monte Carlo and Madrid: 2017 has brought a great renaissance of Rafael Nadal. Only in London did the world’s number one have to give in.
Actually, Rafael Nadal knew for a long time how everything would end in London. At least not with the regular end, the sporty end, a failure on the Centre Court. He had actually just travelled to London to avoid having to cancel the title fight from the outset, especially now that he was going into this title fight as the world’s No. 1,”I had a duty to the tournament, including myself,”Nadal said on Tuesday night when he announced his compulsory retirement from the 2017 ATP World Cup. One last time he had stood on the court, one time too much for sure when it came to his coaches and consultants – but Nadal played against all reason, lost to the Belgian David Goffin in three contested sets and afterwards said with all due clarity:”That was? s it. And then he wished the listeners of his last public appearance a merry Christmas.
Nadal is not only the world’s number 1 at the end of the season, but for the fourth time in his tennis life. At the same time, he is also the world champion of pain, the man who repeatedly travels around the travelling circus with a painful expression and plays games he shouldn’t play. I don’t know anyone who lives with more pain than Rafa,”says his coach and uncle Toni Nadal,” No one else can do that after the US Open triumph for the matador from Manacor once again. Nadals played physically in the deep red area, he also cancelled some tournaments. In Paris he discussed with his team shortly before the ATP finals whether he should compete there. Everybody was against it, only Nadal for it. Nadal finally flew to the Seine, but before his quarter-final match he threw in the towel because of his old, new knee problems. At the latest then it was clear that nothing would come of the title ambitions in London.
The injury tragedy in the world’s closest elite reaches a new peak with Nadal’s retreat. After all, of the Big Four, who have been shaping events at the summit for more than a decade, only the tireless Roger Federer has been left on the home straight of season 17, in the World Cup fight. Andy Murray and Novak Djokovic, last year’s World Cup finalists, did not qualify because of complicated injuries, both of them are hoping for a successful comeback in 2018. But in the case of Djokovics it is by no means clear when exactly this return can and should take place. Apparently, as Djokovic’s advisor Andre Agassi has just suggested, the Serbian had kidnapped a fracture in the right elbow. In the military hospital of the top stars, bitterly enough, there is a lot of activity: The three-time Grand Slam winner Stan Wawrinka, the Canadian Milos Raonic and the Japanese ace Kei Nishikori have also been put out of action for some time now, all of them also taking part in the 2016 World Cup.
Like Federer, Nadal had profited from the fact that he had taken a longer break from the last year of the game to take a break for regeneration. Unlike the Maestro, however, Nadal plunged into the demanding wear-and-tear battles in the sand in 2017, culminating in the grand tenth title coup in Paris. Federer just watched, for him the excursions to the ashes made no sense. So he stayed fit until the end of the season, with a few small cuts, until London. Nadal smiled into the cameras on Sunday when he was presented with the Number 1 trophy for the year, but it could have been a Pyrrhic victory, the victory in the duel for the top of the summit. With him, the man whose game costs so much substance, the question now also arises: When will he even return to the tour? And are the problems really solved? After all, the Spaniard is now 31 years old. And he’s been in the travelling circus for almost 15 years. Tennis years that Nadal recently spoke of as Boris Becker once said:”These are dog years.”