Rafael Nadal’s doctor has said that he remains cautious about Nadal’s comeback and has admitted that his injury has progressively got worse.
The Spaniard first injured his knee during his Quarter-Final defeat to Marin Cilic at the Australian Open, where he had to retire in the fifth set due to the injury. The former world number one was due to return last week in Acapulco before he once again injured his knee during a practice session and had to withdraw from the tournament as well as Indian Wells and Miami.
Now Nadal’s doctor, Angel Ruiz Contorro, has spoke about the injury with and the incident that occurred during his practice session with Adrian Mannarino in Acapulco, “When you are about to compete and in your first training session [and] this happens, obviously it influences you and it’s hard,” Contorro said in an interview with El Pais.
“It’s in a muscle and not in a tendon, which would have been much worse. The negative thing is that pain is back in an already affected zone and this is not something unusual. Rafa was practicing in a normal way and everything was going well. We need to be optimistic, because we have always been so, but also realistic and now, seeing what happened, we have to be as cautious as possible.”
Contorro also spoke about a return date as he is hopeful that Nadal can return to the clay court swing in April in Monte Carlo, “Rafa will be back when he will be doing well. We hope that he will be recovered for the clay-court season, that’s the goal. Rafa should rest for two or three weeks, then have a progressive recovery, but it always depends on how everything works. You have to monitor this injury closely, so we will go week-by-week, without rushing.”
It is obvious that Nadal fans should remain cautious about his comeback and accept that he will have seasons where he won’t be at his full capacity as his style of tennis requires a lot of effort and hard work, which he cannot complete consistently at the age of 31 years old.
