16-time Grand Slam champion Rafael Nadal will kick off his bid for a first ever title at the Nitto World Tour Finals against David Goffin of Belgium in London on Monday. Will the Spanish superstar end all the speculations regarding his right knee to rest with a powerful performance or will it be a day to savor for Goffin?
Prior to the start of the season ending finale in the British capital the discussion between the fans, the experts and former players centered around Nadal’s injured right knee. In fact, Rafa’s participation in the tournament was in serious doubt when he pulled out of the Paris Masters stating that the pain was simply too much to bear and that’s why he decided to leave the event midway after sealing the year-end World No. 1 ranking.
However, after his arrival in London, Nadal claimed that he wouldn’t have arrived to participate in the tourney if he didn’t feel he can compete with the rest of the field. He said: “If I didn’t believe I could be ready for Monday I wouldn’t be here. The knee is not perfect, of course, after having to retire from Paris… In a couple of days you cannot expect to be 100% but I had treatment and I’m expecting to be better and better every day. I’m here to try my best to give me a chance.”
There are not many trophies in tennis that the World No. 1 hasn’t won, but the ATP Finals, which the pundits have dubbed as the ‘Fifth Slam’ has eluded him and it’s the one trophy he badly wants to win. He will be making his eighth appearance at the tournament, with his best showing being getting through to the finals in 2010 and 2013.
While there’s little doubt about the fact that Nadal has had a wonderful year as he has won a bagful of trophies, including a historic 10th French Open and his 3rd US Open crown, his opponent Goffin too has had a very successful season so far. Of course, his success cannot match the lofty standards set by the southpaw, but Goffin still attained many of his career goals in 2017.
One of those goals was to break into the top-10 and he did so right at the start of the year by reaching the Australian Open quarters and by proceeding through to the finals in Sofia and Rotterdam. Just like Rafa, Goffin loves to play on clay and he enjoyed a solid run of results on the surface highlighted by a semi-final run in Madrid. However, an ankle injury brought his Roland Garros campaign to a premature halt as he fell to Horacio Zeballos in the third round.
The same injury kept him out of the entire grass-court season and when he returned on the North American hard courts he didn’t look as sharp as he looked early in the year. However, slowly and steadily he found his groove, winning back-to-back titles in Shenzhen and Tokyo and followed that up with a semifinal showing in Basel, thus securing his spot in the ATP World Tour Finals.
Head-to-Head: It will be the duo’s third meeting on the ATP tour with Nadal winning on both the occasions. However, the two things that could give Goffin the confidence are – both those matches were contested on clay and not many people have a chance of beating Nadal on that surface and the second is the fact that Nadal has himself said that his knee is still not 100% and it will take some time for him to attain peak fitness. This is definitely Goffin’s best chance to defeat Nadal, but Nadal surely would have the upper hand in the match just because he is simply mentally too tough.